Shards: A Series
by europanya
Summary: An older, wiser, Buffy discovers the many joys and sorrows of interdimensional travel through time and variation, each with a Spike in it: good, bad but never ugly. Told post-Chosen-Spike is dust, but in other realities he's very much undead.
1. Begin

NOTE: This is NOT A WIP! It is a series. Meaning, each installment of "Shards" will be a story unto itself with a teaser at the end of what the next reality might be. I'm not sure how many I will write or when I will write them. A saw this set-up as a nice way to cure my Spuffy plot bunny attacks and yet give them form. Buffy can go anywhere at anytime in any reality randomly. I figure there ain't a kink in my noggin that won't get dusted off for this. Hang on and enjoy the ride!

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Desoto hia873 for excellent beta work!

**Shards: A Series**

by Europanya

Buffy sat on a rock near the edge of the Sunnydale crater at sunset, fingering a thick plastic business card in her hand. It was thicker than most business cards, because a small red jewel was mounted in its center. She liked the jewel, the way it felt when she rubbed her thumb over its smooth surface. It sparkled, catching the orange sun. Even in the long shadows she could still read the lettering:

Ahmad Pollox, Master Necromancer

Specializing in Interdimensional Travel

and Pest Control Since 1078

1766 Fairfax Ave.

Los Angeles, CA

She'd kept this card at the bottom of her purse for three years now. Today had been her 40th birthday. She'd spent it alone with her bowl of pet goldfish and a lot of mint chip ice cream and tears. Tomorrow she was going to use it.

Buffy walked home along the same small desert-town streets she had followed for over a decade. The warm night wind kicked up rogue sand that caught in her short brown hair. She waved to Mrs. Pitchim who sat on her front porch sipping sun tea just like she did every night. She stopped and chatted with Mr. Brunswik and petted Scampy as they made their rounds of the fire hydrants. Mrs. Wilson was out on her front lawn yelling up the street for Davey to bring his bike in, it was getting late! Soon Buffy came to her small two-bedroom home, opened the low white picket fence and climbed the four shallow stairs to her door. She opened the screen, unlocked it and went in.

Buffy went to her kitchen and opened the fridge, selecting a lemon soy yogurt cup. A light was blinking on her answering machine and she hit the playback button while she fished through her jumbled silverware drawer for a spoon. It was Willow.

"Hey, birthday girl! Sorry I didn't get a chance to call earlier. Flora and I were still driving back from Shasta. The air up there is so clear; we should all go sometime. Anyway, home now - Portland. Give us a call tonight if you're still awake. I don't care how late. Hope you got the card! Love you, oh, and Flora says 'Love you, too' and 'Happy forty.' Uh, if that's something you want to be happy about. I say, well, it's better than not turning forty at all! But okay, I'll just shut up now. Bye!"

Buffy smiled and hit 'erase messages' and took her yogurt to the living room. She sat on the worn end of the sofa and flipped on the TV - news. She felt she should listen to the weather report, just to make sure the drive up the 5 wouldn't be too windy, or foggy or something that might cause a delay. A gust of wind blew past the slightly open window, ruffling her curtains and scattering the five greeting cards she'd left standing on the table that afternoon before her nightly walk.

She slid off the couch and bent to gather them up and re-verticalize them. The blue and yellow one with the sweet poetic message was from Xander's wife, Helen. It was signed by their four kids in various degrees of mastered penmanship in crayon to colored pencil - both adult signatures were signed in neat blue ballpoint by Helen. The cheery yellow-faced BE HAPPY DAMMIT! card was from Willow and her wife Flora. The beige card with the tapered faux handmade paper edges and Shakespearean quote was from Giles. The cartoony Cathy ripoff card about entering your Golden Years and getting age spots was from Dawn and her husband Jeff. And the unexpected close-up black leather crotch shot Suck This! 40! card was from Faith and Robin postmarked from New York City. Andrew's card she wasn't expecting until next week, with the self-humiliating 'I Forgot!' message to make them six in all. She smiled as they all lined up from edge to edge. Then she got up and closed the window.

Buffy woke on her sofa during an infomercial for ABS!ational Workout Cream! Only $49.95 a bottle plus shipping and handling. A woman with overly manicured red nails was rubbing the slippery stuff all over some rock-hard model boy who looked like he'd been born that way. Or turned. Buffy sighed and clicked off the TV. She was _so_ not going there tonight. She needed a decent night's sleep for the drive.

She lay in bed in the dark for another hour or so, teeth minty fresh, listening to the wind and watching the backyard palms cast fingery shadows over the pillow next to her. It'd been years since anyone had lain upon it. How long was it since Richard had left? Three years now? Though he hadn't shed his balding head there for long. He was nice enough, she supposed. Nice and normal. She didn't really miss him. What she missed was the heat of another body holding her in the night - the weight of a man on her, in her, filling up the void. It didn't matter much if he was any good at it, just as long as he was there occasionally. That's all she really wanted. And that's why she slept alone.

In her dreams that night, the Suck This! card boy and the ab boy were rubbing an entire tube of slimy $49.95 cream on each other's bellies.

Buffy parked outside Lulu's Launderette on Fairfax Drive in Los Angeles and checked twice to make sure she set her car alarm. Fine neighborhood for necromancing - barred widows, smashed beer bottles, spray-painted parking meters. The one nearest her space couldn't even be force-fed a coin. Oh well, the Corolla would probably be stolen long before the metermaid came around. Buffy walked past a couple of ancient women, a drunk old man and three Ethiopian restaurants before she came to the door at 1766. The name Pollox was painted on the wall over a dented mailbox and a ratty set of stairs leading up the side of the cracked stucco building. It looked like the place hadn't been in use for years. Wonderful. She had to pee, too.

At the top were a barred door and a wall buzzer. She rang it and waited. To her shock a small Asian man opened the door.

"Hi," he said without accent. "Can we help you?" By his strange black robed garb she thought he should have an accent.

"Uh, yeah. I came here on the advice of Willow Rosenberg the witch? You know her?" Buffy fished out the jeweled card and held it up as proof.

The small man unlatched the bars and came out, holding up the card for scrutiny, peering closely into the red jewel. He looked impressed and handed the card back. "I see," he said. "Please come in."

She followed him into the narrow studio and was asked to wait for the 'boss' in a red chair in a round curtained room. She asked if she could use the ladies' room and was directed to a scuffed door in the back of a box-filled storage room crammed with traps and large metal canisters with poison warning labels on them. _Specializing in Interdimensional Travel and Pest Control Since 1078._ Go figure. She dried her hands on her slacks as she came back into the main room and sat in the red chair. The rest of the room was vacant except for an ornate hanging wire and glass molded chandelier. She stood to get a closer look at it when the sound of a man clearing his throat startled her.

A dark-skinned man in red and black robes and dreadlocks was standing behind her. "Buffy Summers, I presume?"

Now this guy had an accent. African, as in the continent. "Yes, my friend Will - "

"Willow Rosenberg. Yes, I know this woman. We met in Nigeria some years ago. She told me you would come someday when you got lonely enough."

Buffy felt unease sink into her bones. When had Willow been in Africa? When Xander was there? But she'd been in South America - hell, she'd been wherever she wanted to be at the flick of a wrist. Buffy had been shocked to hear her and Flora were taking a _car_ to Shasta. And missing her birthday. Darn it.

"Um, I don't know about lonely, I just…"

"Then you are here for rat control? We have a fine selection of ecological and safe pest removal and transport receptacles."

"No," she said, irritated. "That's not why I'm here either. I'm here…"

Why _was_ she here? Because of a promise she'd kept to Wills to hang on to the card even though the very thought of using it had freaked her out from the start. _It's a good trip, Buffy. Easy to take and fascinating to experience. Interdimensional travel is cool and safe. Flora and I have done it twice now! You should try it. You might learn something about yourself. _She hadn't known what to say but took the card and smiled politely. Then it had enjoyed traveling around the dimensions of her handbag for three years. Until now.

"You've lost someone you want to find again," Pollox said.

Buffy felt tears starting and blinked them back. She hadn't expected that. But of course, that's what Willow had meant when she first put the card in her hand with a hopeful, yet sad expression. "Yes."

"Someone dear to you. A friend, I believe?"

Buffy looked at her boots. The soles made small triangular printings in the plush blue rug. "Yes, a friend…or, something more. I don't know, we never got the chance to really sort it out."

"This friend. He is dead now, yes?"

The tears threatened again, but she sniffed them back. "I guess you could call him that."

"Let me see your card."

Buffy looked up, confused. Pollox smiled. A business smile. She fished through her purse and handed it over. Something told her she wouldn't be getting it back.

Pollox scrutinized the card even more than the Asian man had. He held it up to the shaft of light just parting through the heavy curtains. Red flecks danced over the walls of the room.

"Ah, yes," he said. "There is much here we can use. Please wait just another moment."

"Sure," she said and began to pace. Meanwhile, the Asian man entered with candles and a taper. He fitted the chandelier with them and lit them up. Then he went around the room securing the curtains, blocking out the meager light.

Pollox soon returned with a much larger red jewel, polished and glittering between velvet gloves. "This is the conduit. It will gather the information from your shard and refract the connected dimensions throughout the jewel. Watch now."

He set the jewel between the candles in a loop of wire and taking the business card, fit the much smaller jewel into a tiny recess at the very top of the brilliant cut stone. The light became dazzling and Buffy shielded her eyes.

"No!" the necromancer cried. "Look! Look! Here you will find your gateway!"

"But! I don't know that I want to leave this dimension. How do I know where I'll wind up and if I'll get back in time to go to work on Monday? And what if I wind up in the world of nothing but crabs?" _Or was that shrimp? There was probably a crab world, too._

"It is not known where you will go or in what sequence. The universe is infinite. The variables are infinite. Each moment of your life sprouts like a vine with every choice you make, every choice you could have made, growing from infinite branchings. Already you have chosen to step into the gateway and to step away. You have already chosen to kick me in the face and marry my assistant. But you will only remember one choice, one path. This conduit will give you a chance to see the paths you took outside your linear consciousness. Some old, some new, some that happened long ago, others that may never occur to your knowledge."

"Then I will be seeing myself, my life? Lives? Not shrimp?"

"You have a life somewhere in which you choose to fill your garage with 15 tons of candy corn, but you will not likely go there on this journey. Only the most probable variations will make themselves known as you travel."

"Great, so I walk out of here and let's say, find my car's been stolen, but it's only probably been stolen and I'll only probably have to pay the impound yard that picks it up, stripped to the steel shell, a probable $185 dollars to tow it to the probable junkyard that will probably be closed on Sundays."

Pollox nodded. "Probably."

Buffy now remembered why she'd slept clear through Prof. Hayes' lecture on theoretical physics. This was the stuff migraines were made of. Even so, she unshielded her eyes and peered in. Light swirled and flashed, but once her eyes adjusted, she began to see flickers of images, vague and fleeting: Dawn, her mom, her first goldfish, the mall, her old home, her friends - a glimpse of Willow smiling, Xander nailing, Riley yawning, Spike smoking. Spike. There were lots of him, more than the rest, fluttering by on a jeweled superhighway. Yes, a world of shrimp would be just fine as long as he was in it. God, she missed him. Somewhere in these flashings there had to be a dimension in which he miraculously walked away from the collapsing Hellmouth. The thought of that possibility and no other was what had brought her here.

"If I go," she said. "How will I get back?"

"You will take this along," Pollox said, handing her a small ring with a green jewel similar to the one that had been in the business card. "Each world you encounter will last for six to eight hours before shifting to the next. You cannot control how long you will stay or where you will go next. Time will not move in sequence. You will be older; you will be younger; you will be happy; you will be sad. Not all outcomes are pleasant and the people you meet will not notice the change unless you make yourself known to them. You must be prepared for that and are advised to avoid disturbing the natural course of each dimension as much as possible. When you have had enough, smash the jewel in this ring and you will come back to the place you started, here."

"How much time will I lose?"

"You will have already returned at the precise moment you depart."

"That's very convenient."

Pollox grinned. "It's a wicked ride."

She took a step closer, toward the spot Pollox indicated directly under the flashing jewel. "What's this gonna cost me?"

"Only your sense of complacency."

She knew that somehow already. But then again, she was 40 now, there was really no time to lose. She stepped forward.

Buffy walked back down Fairfax to her car. It was still there. Good pick, probability. Stupid necromancer, stupid Willow. She'd wasted over $75 in gas to get here and all she had to show for it was a mild headache and a long drive home. Nothing had happened when she stepped into the jewel's light. Nothing. No zap or whoosh, no memories of past or present. No dead lovers back from the dead - less dead. Just a dark curtained room. Even the robed duo had taken off. Shit. She should have known better then to get her hopes up. She got in her car and shut the door.

"Buffy?" Someone was shaking her shoulder. "Buffy, you should wake up and see this." It was Willow, stupid Willow. Yeah, she needed to have a good long talk about this with Willow. Buffy raised her head - the beach towel had left bumpy terry cloth marks on her cheek. She had sand grains in her teeth. She sputtered them out and sat up. Willow was sitting on the towel next to her, an arm around Tara, pointing to the horizon where the sun was setting over the deep blue-gray sea, painting the sky in reds and purples.

"Wow, that is amazing," she said, admiring the colors as they melted together.

Willow was smiling that 'giddy with conspiratory thoughts' smile. "Your honey will be here soon, Buff."

Buffy scratched the sand from behind her ear. "My who?" Tara. Tara was smiling, too. Why? She shouldn't be here. And what was up with Willow's hair and all the weird curls like how she used to wear it when…

A fire flaring up to her left startled Buffy out of her weird disoriented thoughts. "Xander, I don't think emptying half a can of lighter fluid into the woodpile was a very wise decision. Look at the blatant manly display of fire production that's resulted. It could have burned my carefully toasted puffed gelatin right off the hanger."

"Some people like their toasted marshmallows a little burned on the side, Ahn. Observe _this_ manly display of toasty goodness."

Xander was here, kneeling in the sand next to a bonfire pit erupting with flame and ribboning the air with vapors. He held the cool end of an unwrapped wire hanger with a flaming hunk of sticky marshmallowly-shaped char at the glowing tip. The black glob slid downwards and onto his hand. He jumped up. "Ow! Graham cracker! I need a graham! Anyone? Soon, before the flesh separates from the bone!"

Buffy responded, reaching for an as-yet unwrapped wax rectangle of cracker snacks, catching only half the ooze on it. The rest melted right though the paper and onto the sand at her feet with a plop. Xander abandoned it and trotted over to the open cooler to plunge his singed hand into the icy water with a rattling splash.

"Point made," Anya said, fingering off her lightly tanned puffed gelatin and popping it in her mouth with a quick grin.

Anya.

Overly cheerful, annoying Anya was eating marshmallows. Buffy felt an overwhelming surge of joy and dropped down in the sand to give the young woman a fierce hug and kiss on the cheek.

"Ooh! Buffy. Thank you, but I'm much more a man's lady this century. Or, well, all centuries come to think of it. You can go back and sit with the lesbians now. They'll better appreciate your sudden unaccountable bursts of affection."

"Anya!" Buffy said and turned to look back at the 'ladies only' section. "Tara! It's so good to see you two again. You're looking so well for being..." _Not dead. They're supposed to be dead. Why don't they know this?_

Tara nodded her elaborately braided head bashfully. "Yeah, Buffy, it's n-nice to be out here all together. It's like we forget sometimes how wonderful it can be to have everyone in the same place at the same time."

"I know…" Buffy said, feeling an odd sense of something missing coming over her. "Uh, guys, where's Dawn?"

"Dawn?" Xander repeated after Willow gave her a shrug. "What's a Dawn?"

Buffy looked at him like he was the biggest dope on the planet. "My sister? _That_ Dawn?"

Willow touched her shoulder. "Buffy, are you okay?" Buffy felt like the world was shifting under the sands. Something wasn't right here. Something wasn't right with her. Where was her car? How'd she get back from LA so fast and why had she gone there in the first place, not to see Angel…

"Spike!" Her hand flew up and covered her mouth even as she said his name. It was coming back to her - the room, the curtains, the jewel, the dimensions. This was a dimension. They didn't know she was in this Buffy. Had she blown it already?

Willow rubbed her shoulder, soothingly. "It's okay, Buff. He said he was coming."

Buffy shifted closer to Willow, speaking low. "When? When's he getting here?"

Willow shrugged. "The sun's just setting. He'll get here. He always comes out to see you."

Some old dusty part of Buffy's heart shuddered and came to life. "He does?" _No Dawn here in this dimension. But there's a Spike. A Spike who will 'get here,' soon. _

For the first time since arriving in this confusion Buffy took a look down at herself. Whoa! Where'd _those_ come from? It'd been years since they'd sat up like that. And since when could she fit into her ancient blue polka dot bikini and wrap? She grabbed her own ass. Whoa! Again.

Willow laughed. "You look fine, Buffy. Spike's not terribly picky about that, you know," she said leaning in. "He likes you a little 'tousled.'"

"Wha?" How did they know? When did they know? Why weren't they threatening to go after him with stakes? When did she tell them about Spike and her? No, that was after the break-up. Long after and…shit after _Anya_ and Spike. Which would be after the wedding and then…She looked over her shoulder. Xander and Anya were sitting side by side now, staring at her quizzically and holding hands with matching wedding bands. "I think I need a beer."

Xander obliged her and Buffy sat quietly, sipping her wet sandy bottle and trying not to talk. Tara and Willow were cuddling, Xander and Anya were talking quietly and pointing at emerging stars and her date - at least she _hoped_ he was her date - was crawling out of a crypt somewhere.

How many hours did she have? Six to eight, the necromancer had said. Could she make it that long here without flubbing up royally and getting herself committed to Sunnydale Hospital before time ran out and whoop! we're outta here and into a dimension where Spike's married to Anya and they have little demon kidlets all named Dawn? Did Spike still love her? Or did she treat him like shit and fuck things up again? Was her mother still alive? There wouldn't be time to find all that out for certain. This was traveling, like Willow had said, the Willow from years from now. Nothing was stable. She was to learn from this. Learn important lessons. Grow. Evolve. Have sex. _Did I say that? _Have amazing starry-skied beach sex with her former vampire lover. If he didn't show up with a deathwish chip on his shoulder, that is. Chip. The chip. Did Spike have one? Was Riley ever in her life or the rest of his crew to _put_ the chip in? Headache returning. Nerves fraying. More beer needed. _Never should have slept through that lecture._

Buffy eyed the green gemstone set in gold on her right ring finger. There was always a way out of this if it got too weird. _But not before you get fucked within an inch of your life._ Okay, she did _not_ say that! Enlightenment. Focus on enlightenment.

Buffy had killed the first beer and was nursing the second when something small and white began to make its way across the sands from the parking lot. Willow nudged her and winked. "Go on, Buffy. Tara and I will keep your towel warm."

Was that him, or was it a fast-moving poodle? Only one way to find out. She tried to get up but her legs didn't work. They needed to work. They needed to work _now_. Then she was up, running over the sands, her silky wrap trailing in the warm summer wind behind her, moonlight glowing through her hair, which was really long now. _I look like a bad feminine deodorant commercial_, she thought, but kept on until he was there before her, bare feet in the sand, gorgeously muscled arms crossed over that ab-cream boy belly, dressed in a sleeveless, faded, band-no-longer-decipherable tee and Holy Mother Teresa - dangerously short, ratty, blue-jean cutoffs with the pockets hanging down over his... Legs. Spike has legs. Two of them. Can die now. Again.

"Evening, love."

Oh…the voice. How could she forget the voice? Low and raspy and maple syrupy and the accent and the ridiculous hair and bullshit attitude. You broke up with _this_? Say something, idiot!

"Hey, Spike. Glad you could make it." Gah, she sounded like a receptionist. Well, she _was_ a receptionist. Now. But he didn't need to know that. From the way he was looking down at her in her little yellow dots and twirly hip-ties, she'd be a Catholic school girl for the night if that's what worked for him. She stole a glance at his crotch. Oh, she hoped they were still having sex. Lots of sex.

Spike cocked his head and narrowed his gaze in that adorable bald eagle-like way of his. "I make it every Friday night, pet. For the past six weeks going since the Scoobies started this little summertime weenie roast. You thought I had laundry to do?"

"No! No. Not at all. I was just…" _Horny? Slutty? Desperate for a shag? Agh! Shut up!_ "…looking forward to seeing you."

His lip curled wickedly. Shit, that was hot. "You saw me this morning and this afternoon and just before the run to 7-11 and…"

"I know! Just, uh…you're still in love with me, right?"

"Always."

His eyes were that same lovely blue, even in moonlight. God, he was beautiful. And he loved her, wanted her - it was in his every glance. Why did you dump this guy? _Why_? Yeah, no soul. Little hang up. Though he did look awfully at ease. At least a lot more at ease than she was. Maybe he had the soul now. Wouldn't hurt to ask.

"So, um, Spike. Have ya been to Africa lately?"

Her question threw him. "Why in bloody hell would I go to Africa?"

Nope. No soul. Not like they sell 'em on eBay. Unless, Willow zapped him with the gypsy-mojo which would mean they might not be able to...Oh, this sucked! _Just ask!_

"Um, so you haven't seen your soul around lately, or anything like it, have you?" _Smooth_.

He lit right up and started to laugh, big beautiful Spike guffaws, leaning over to grab his knees. "Slayer, you want to tell me you haven't been drinkin'? That's the funniest damn thing you've said in ages. My soul's long gone, sweetheart, and good riddance to it."

It's true. Soulless Spike. You get to have sex with soulless Buffy-obsessed Spike all night long on a beach wearing your twenty-year-old body. Enlightenment indeed. Thank you, Will! _So_ getting you the deluxe fruit basket for Christmas this year, the one with chocolates in it, not just the yucky pears.

"Spike, can we not talk anymore and just start having sex, now?"

He shrugged. "Sounds fine to me - Oi!"

Her leap knocked him back into the warm sand and would have knocked the wind out of him, too, if he had any wind to knock. She claimed his mouth, kissing the heck out of that lush smirky grin, her fingers curling through that maddeningly crunchy hair, her tongue tasting all the wonderful flavors that came with the tobacco-smoking, blood-drinking, vampire variety. Seventeen-year-old Buffy would have said 'ew,' but 40-now Buffy, starved for the taste of something more dangerous than a freshly flossed dentist who occasionally drove 45 in a 30 zone, was eating Spike up like a dark chocolate Dove bar. She was making yummy sounds in her throat and just didn't care. Mmmm. Vampire. Tasty.

Spike pushed her off a little and grinned - all malicious and playful. "Damn, Slayer. What's got into you tonight? The rest of the sappy-snogging brigade get you all worked up?" He squeezed her ass with one hand, while the long fingers of the other slipped under her bikini to pet the length of her sex like a newborn bunny. "Must have been quite a pre-show. You're burning up." Spike never was one to mince advances - he just grabbed the goods as soon as they were offered and possessed the nose to know exactly when that offering was ripe. She was ripe alright. Three years of abstinence and too-many-to-count years of lousy lays were pouring out of her. It was embarrassing how wet she was right now.

"Oh…yes…I guess so…shit, do that knuckle thing again."

He made that singular horny vampire sound as he held her firmly around the hip, fucking her nice and deep with his fingers. No one had hands like his. No one. Or if they had, hadn't a clue how to use them. Spike should write a book. Or maybe make a step-by-step video - sell it on that 24-hour shopping channel. She'd be the willing demonstration model, spread wide for all the cameras to see. Oh, this was gonna be good.

"Come closer, baby," he said, pulling her toward his mouth. "Let me get my taste of it."

Baby. Love. Sweetheart. To think she used to complain about the pet names. She'd be his baby, his love, his bitch, his whore, his naked mole rat - anything he wanted to call her was fine, just fine, as long as he said it like that, like his cock was animating his mouth. She throbbed at the thought of that smug mouth on her again - that tireless no-breath-needed lip and tongue combo that could gobble on her for hours, pleased as punch to be just - pleasing her. She made a gaspy sound of agreement and fumbled with the stringy ties at her hip. He grabbed it and severed the nylon with a briefly lowered fang. The sight of that perfect razor-sharp incisor extending and retracting shot a bolt of white-hot lust right down her spine and into the happy place, which had grown very happy indeed - all swollen and juicy, begging for a generous suck. He had her ass in both hands now, and slid her up, her knees in the sand to either side of his face, lowering her to partake of the waiting feast.

She rode his face, his fingers up in her pussy, while he licked and nibbled just the right nooks just the right ways. She bucked and moaned as the distant pit fires blurred in her pleasure-clouded vision. She wasn't really too concerned who might be walking up the beach. Some people were, of course, but they gave their distant writhing forms a wide berth.

"Spike, oh, baby. That's so good. So good." She ground her clit into his nose while his tongue slid in her, plumbing the depths of her. His free hand moved up under her top, cupping a breast and capturing a nipple. She crushed his hand to her, encouraging him to play rough. She wanted to race for that red hot explosion she felt building and thrumming in her sex, but he held her back, just working her up notch by notch, slipping out of her cunt to lap at her jangled nerves with the flat of his tongue.

His hands left her and she could feel him working himself out of his shorts. She was afraid to look, afraid she'd faint from delight at the sight of him all long and pale and hard as fucking granite. It'd been so long since she'd had it so good - well, since the last time she'd had _him_, in fact. _Like you're God's gift. _He'd been right about that, self-righteous schmuk. Spike lifted her up and tossed her over onto the sand with a growl. She giggled like a teenager (come to think of it, she practically was) and crawled toward the surging ocean while he cursed and scrambled to get out of the rest of his clothes.

He caught up to her at the tideline where the kelp gathered in small tangled clumps. He wrapped a long cool arm around her middle and pressed his hand next to hers in the sand. The damp tip of his delicious cock was poking her labia, demanding entry. "Just can't get enough of me tonight, is that it? Can't believe how randy you get sometimes. Gotta drink two pints of blood a day now just to keep my gear up," he said, spreading her open and sliding into her in one long glorious push. Heaven - oh, he was heaven. And she would know.

So this was how it was for them in this world. Everyone knew they were unrepentant lovers and they just let it happen, indulged themselves night and day and night again. Why couldn't it have been like this before? No Dawn. There's no Dawn here. Then no Glory either. No death. No resurrection. Just Spike, his devouring love pouring out for her and her endless capacity to receive it, letting him fill her up to bursting. "Spike, God, fuck me, please."

"Nothing I'd like more."

He was fucking her now, just like he used to, steady and hard, his groin colliding with her ass, his cock up in there so thick and deep it was like he was screwing the back of her mind. No one filled her like this, no one took possession like this, made her feel all wild and nasty and just so full of pure animal lust she wanted to twist and bite and growl and break the world down around her. The waves came up now and again to soak her knees and palms as they sank into the drenched sand. Tiny sand crabs swam between her fingers. She had sand everywhere, sticking to her arms, legs, ass - there was some probably grinding its way up into her pussy, but she just couldn't give a damn about any of it because she was so full, complete, pulsing, raging, backing against him for more - telling him to do it, give it up, fuck her good, fuck her hard, that's my lover, my bad-ass vampire.

Her climax was hovering, just on the edge of collapse, so she fell to her belly beneath him and flipped herself over, splashing and spattering wet globby sand on his arms and chest. He grinned, his tongue flickering in the moonlight over white teeth and he withdrew a moment to set her up how he knew she liked it - on her back, legs up on his shoulders and his hands free to work her tits and clit while his cock slid in for more. He fucked her, laughing at the waves that splattered up against her back as she elbowed up, sputtering, lifting her ass off the sand so he could hit that perfect spot juust right while his fingers pinched and worried nipple and clit like tuning dials. She came, carelessly shouting into the darkness at How. Fucking. Good. This. Was. How good it always was, how rare, how precious. Her body hummed with endorphin-fed elation while he was still in her, pumping, shifting to find his own end.

"Spike, pull it out when you go - I want to see it."

His eyes widened a bit, then narrowed at the dark thrill her request gave him. He fucked her good and quick, thrusting the air out of her in huffs until his eyes screwed shut and he wrenched himself free at the last moment to stroke his cock in his fist, squeezing the head as white sticky vamp-spooge pulsed across her belly and breasts in stringy patterns. Damn. That was…_damn_.

Spike cracked his neck vertebrae and looked down at her all boneless and spunky. "That getcha where you needed to go, baby?" he asked with that smart-ass self-satisfied grin of his. She didn't know whether to kiss him or kick him. She collapsed into the wet sand instead, seeing more stars than the ones that should be overhead.

"Yeah, for a few minutes. You're not off the hook yet." _Not for another five hours or so at least. Oh, why couldn't she stay here? For how long? A week? Year? Forever?_

A wave came up and he grabbed her up against his chest before it could choke her. It splashed around their legs instead, where they clung, sated and rubbery. He tipped her chin up and kissed her softly. "Love you," he said, nuzzling her temple.

She turned her cheek to catch his gaze and gave the words right back to him. A look of wonder warmed his blue eyes.

"Don't I say that?" she asked, hurting at the thought that even here in this free and open reality she still held back the words he most needed to hear.

He smiled like a child. "Never enough."

Buffy lay on her belly in the sand near the fire after some knotted bikini repairs and a brief saltwater bath she'd subjected herself to despite the cold ocean water. Xander was teaching Spike how to catch and throw an American football - badly. Perhaps his complaints about the damned thing not having a proper ball shape and his insistence on holding a burning cigarette in his left hand while trying to catch it as it came spiraling unerringly at his head had something to do with his general lack of athletic grace.

"Sod this, Harris," he said, 'spiking' it into the sand. "You and your bloody ridiculous ball! You know how much a decent fag costs me nowadays?" He'd just lost another in the sand 'going long.'

Xander made a face. "So not going to touch that one. See, Buffy, I can play nice with the snarky vampire."

She nodded her approval. Even here, Xander had trouble fully accepting her and Spike, but he was making a monumental effort to befriend the beast and that touched her immensely. She'd forgotten what he looked like with two working eyes.

Spike brushed the sand off his stomach and pulled out another cigarette from his fuck-me-now shorts and lit it with the glowing end of a marshmallow hanger that had been left in the fire. He came over to her and plopped down, taking a long drag, watching his smoke blow up into the night sky. "Lots of stars up tonight, pet."

She stretched out on her back next to him and yawned. Her belly was full of hot dogs, corn chips, beer, chocolate, grahams, everything she'd never eat at such satisfying quantities if she had to worry about getting on the scale the next day. She'd leave that for the other Buffy to wonder at. She gazed up at Spike sitting next to her on her towel, smoking and staring up at the sky. He looked content. Extra calories weren't the only sinful pleasures she'd have to return in the next few hours. Sad pangs struck her. She wanted more Spike, every drop she could drink. Xander had settled back against Anya, smooching and Willow and Tara had long since disappeared toward the rocks at the beach's far end.

"Spike, come walk with me," she said, poking his thigh with a toe.

He followed her down the sands, walking through the shallow lapping waves. He hurried to finish up the smoke and tossed the butt into the ocean so he could take her hand. Prior-Buffy would have given him shit about littering, and certainly would never had allowed him the simple loving connection of her fingers threaded in his. But time and struggle, love and loss, had taught her otherwise - that there was only so much you could expect from another person - and to try and extract more only made them fade away or bash themselves to bits trying to be someone or something they were never meant to be. Funny how Spike's lack of soul meant nothing as she walked along in the sure grip of his hand. Why couldn't she have learned this years ago when there was still a Spike to grip?

"Are you happy?" she asked him as they sloshed along.

He smiled a little. "Haven't ever asked me that before, love. Don't think anyone has." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Let's see: got smokes, got blood, got a bed with a lovely warm girl in it every night. Fuck, yeah, I'm happy."

Buffy felt warm - warmer than the Pacific summer night. So they lived together. How very sweet. Her mother must be gone.

Spike squeezed her hand. "Are you happy, Buffy? I mean with all the not slaying anymore and all."

She stopped. Just stopped and stared at him, at the beach, the ocean. That was it, that was the difference. _She'd_ stopped. Here, one day, she'd just stopped slaying. That was why there was no Dawn. No deaths of Tara or Anya. Xander had said his vows, kept his binocular vision. Giles was not here and not just for the fact they were still a bunch of barely-adults (the humans anyway) lazing about on a Friday night. She'd stopped. _How?_ She wanted the answer to that question more than anything.

"Buffy? Sweetheart? You all right?"

She felt tears starting. "Yeah, I'm just…"

He reached for her and she pressed her face to his shoulder to try and let some of it out. She needed to cry off some of the lonely nights and nightmares and regrets onto the cool perfect skin of the only man who ever really loved her just for being who she needed to be. Even when she wasn't the hero anymore.

"Do you forgive me, for giving up?"

"It was your choice, love. Best decision you could make when your Mum first took ill and all. Faith's never complained about it. Slaying sure beats sitting on her arse in Chino, I'd wager. Besides, I wouldn't say I'd rather be killing things right now, m'self."

So that's how it was done. She'd quit. Faith was paroled. That would be a first for slayer history. Early retirement. Did Giles understand? Did the Council even care? Did Faith have a little sister now to protect from the wiles of a hell-goddess fashion-victim? So many questions and no time. There was only one thing she really wanted from this dimension and the item in question was holding her and murmuring the sweetest things in her ear.

"Spike, please just listen to me for a moment and don't think it's weird, okay?"

He nuzzled her neck. "Sure, love."

She held on to him tight and spoke hurriedly, before she could think about what she was going to say. "Being the slayer was never an easy ride. You know that. It made me hard and bitter and sick half the time with worry for my friends and family. I lost so much…so much I couldn't replace. It all just went away or got ruined and messed up. I couldn't do a damn thing about any of it. But there was one disaster in my life I made all on my own. The one good thing I ever really had. The one thing that I could never accept and just beat all to shit because it wouldn't break, wouldn't go away - and that was you, baby. I used you up and spit you out and crushed you under my feet because…because I _could_. Because you let me. And you never gave up on me, even when I made you so angry and desperate that you…" What was worse? The assault or the soul? He'd done both. Over her. To prove something to her - the devil and the saint whispering in his ear. And what did he get in return? Dusted.

He pulled her back now, looking down at her, distressed and confused. "Buffy, you're wrong, sweetheart. You've never done these things. We had a bit of a rough start, but you came around right enough. I love you. You could never be like that. Dunno what the hell's gotten into you thinkin' that, but…"

She kissed him. That was the best thing to do. Just shut her gob, as he'd say, and make with the kissing. Words would serve her ill on this journey, better to speak with her lips and hands, palms running up and down his beautiful body, drinking him in. She wanted to love him, worship him, make him so fucking happy he'd never once in the rest of his unlife feel rejected or unloved or incomplete. Perfect. That was the word for him. Perfect. For her.

They were back in the sand, tumbling around, smiling, kissing, pinching, fucking, moaning, feeling the earth moving, turning, waging its battles with good and evil, all without them. The hours rolled by and she knew it was ending, but she didn't want to stop any of it, not waste another moment to show him with her body and eyes and hands and lips how very much he was adored and treasured.

Until the fading began and she grabbed his shoulders, clinging. "Spike… oh God, it's happening. I'm leaving, I have to go. Don't forget, no matter how horrible I am to you, _please_ don't forget."

"Where're you going to, love?" he asked and her heart ached as his voice and face faded, echoing away in her mind as she slipped. She fought her despair with the hope that the next world would be even better. Even better than this…a happy place. _Think of a happy place. With Spike._

When she woke she was sore, the floor under her was cold and hard. She sat up, blinking into the dim light. Tall bars rose before her and when she went to touch them her arm dragged and clinked. She was chained. Frightened, she stood, shaking. She was nearly naked, just a few scraps of cotton-something hugged her hips and one sock was on her left foot. She drew an arm across her bare and bruised breasts. She stank. _Chains, why am I chained?_

Her cell was underground. In a tunnel somewhere. It smelled like the Sunnydale sewers, but the cell was new - put in recently, drilled into the rock. Off in the black distance, water trickled steadily. Quickly she looked to her right hand. The green gem was there. Good. Safe for now.

She stepped up to the bars, her chains clinking behind her. "Hello?" she called out. "Anyone there?"

A groan answered her, close. She jumped back. What she had taken a moment earlier for a dark formless rock was moving, rolling. A dirt- and blood-streaked head emerged from the folds of mud-caked black leather. _Spike. He's trapped here, too. Is he hurt?_

Another groan and a bottle rolled out of the coat, nearly empty and rocking to a stand-still against the outside of the bars. Spike coughed and a rivulet of booze oozed from his lips. The room reeked of whisky and old blood. Her eyes were adjusting now, revealing the collage of images pasted to the walls around her. Of herself, Dawn, her mother and their home on Revello Drive. She recognized some of them as having once belonged to Spike's depraved Buffyshrine. He wasn't a prisoner. She was. And he wasn't injured. He was drunk.

_I don't think this is a happy place._

TBC in Series.


	2. Wrong

**Shards II: Wrong**

by europanya

Buffy sat with her bare butt to the cold grimy floor of her prison, trying to be quiet.

She'd spend six to eight hours in each random dimension, the necromancer had said, and not all of them were going to be pleasant. He was damn right about that. She hadn't been prepared for something like this. But she could see, as sickening as the thoughts were, how it could have come to this - trapped in a dank cell with pictures of her family and herself staring laughingly back at her. Spike chaining her up and making her his personal zoo attraction was not beyond the range of his idiocies. It was humiliating, though, and she wished clothes had been an option in this unreality.

Her captor was drunk, passed out at the foot of her cell and she'd given thought to whether she should just reach out and start playing his inebriated forehead along the bars like a marimba mallet. _Spike, you asshole, why did you have to do this? _

_Why? Because you, this-world-Buffy-you, drove him stark raving bananas! You probably spent twice as many hours macking on him in dark alleys, slipping your tongue in his mouth, letting him get all bunched-up, and then walked it off like it was nothing, like he was a complete lech for wanting some crumb of evidence that the macking had taken place at all! So now you're a macabre conversation piece in his piss-drunk lair. Good work, slayer._

So she was a vampire's trophy now. She hoped to God that was all there was to it. Spike wouldn't really…oh, she hoped it hadn't gone beyond that. But it sure as shit wouldn't have been much of a stretch for him. That was the ugly truth. _Are we getting enlightened now?_

Spike shifted and groaned again. It was a terrible sound. She'd been listening to it for over an hour. His moans filled her with a nauseating mixture of loathing and pity. Half of her wanted to gather him up in her bare and bruised arms and kiss away his pain, while the other half itched to grab something pointy and wooden and give it a home. She flexed her fingers and arched her back, keeping her chain silent. She felt normal. Icky, but normal—strong, honed, able. How had he managed to capture her in the first place? Why didn't she mop the floor with his blond battered head the first chance she got? _Maybe I haven't been here that long._ That was a possibility, though her cell didn't have much to tell. No food scraps or even water. Her tattered remnants of clothing hung off her as if frayed in battle, not by time or wasting. There was a blanket in the corner. Army surplus issue. It was torn and a little crispy at the edges like it had actually been through a war. Surprisingly, she didn't seem too thin or too hurt, or even hungry. There were bruises across her arms and chest and some on her shins, but otherwise, nothing broken. Even her crotch felt…okay. Maybe he'd been gentle. Maybe she'd liked it. _Ugh, don't go there_.

Footsteps stopped her thoughts. Someone was coming. Shit, her plan thus far had been to sit tight and hope it took a vampire more than eight hours to sleep off a litre of Jack. The steps were hurried.

"Spike?" a voice whispered and Buffy's heart clenched. _Dawn_.

Every instinct told her to cry out, to warn her sister off, but Dawn was trotting into the cavern all puppy-like, carrying a brown sack and Buffy's shock was too great to manage even an 'eep.'

"Spike? Oh, shit, you dumb-ass!" her little sister said with a kick to the vampire's sprawled leg. "Why didja have to go and pull this crap _now_?" She set the bag down and pulled his head up by the hair, shaking him like a maraca, not a marimba. Spike coughed and his eyes opened once then rolled shut. "I brought you blood and the clothes and everything. It was really hard and I'm tired and you didn't give me enough money...what am I supposed to do?…oh, shit, shit, _shit_!" Kick. Kick. Kick.

"Dawn!" Buffy moved up against the bars. "You need to get out of here, Spike's…"

Dawn's utterly shocked face and stumbling backwards fall over dead-drunk Spike once again baffled Buffy silent.

Dawn stared at her with large round eyes, moistening with tears. "Oh, my God, Buffy, you're…"

"I'm trapped, Dawn. I can't get out. Spike could hurt you; I need you to run and get Will…I need you to…"

Dawn tore her frightened eyes from her and went right back to kicking the vampire. "Shit, Spike, shit! Wake up!" A dozen tennie-kicks to the head and the vampire responded, drawing up on all fours like a panther coming off of a game warden's trank shot. He cursed, growled, floundered and struggled to lift his head.

"Dawn! Run! Please!" Buffy threw herself at the bars and they resounded through the tunnels with the force of her panic. No way out. The vampire's red-rimmed yellow eyes flashed in the dimness over a row of fine white fangs. She beat her chains at the bars. "Dawn! Run!"

Dawn plainly ignored her and grabbed the fanged menace by the collar, smacking him across the lumpies with a closed fist.

Spike growled and pushed her back on her ass before grabbing his head like it was about to fly off. "'hell, bit. Got one bastard of a way of rousing a fellow. Ow!"

"Spike! Back-off!" Buffy yelled.

Spike's demon eyes shot up at her and slammed back into blue with such force he winced. "Buffy?"

Dawn scrambled back onto her hands and knees, clinging to his jacket, speaking softly. "It's why I need you to wake the hell up. Look!"

Spike sat transfixed, blinking, trembling at the hands, but maybe it was just the booze because he barely caught himself as he leaned over to hold Dawn back. "Easy, bit. We don't know…"

"Spike, I told you to get away from my sister," Buffy said through her teeth as her fingers gripped tight around the bars.

Spike responded like she was speaking Italian. His eyes squinted in puzzlement, then slowly rounded with, was it hope…?

"Buffy?"

The pain in his voice took her back a second. But only a second. She was grizzlybear-momma pissed now. "Dawn, listen to me. I'm trapped. I can't get out. He's chained me here. I need you to stop being such an idiot and get the hell out of here and go find Willow!"

"Buffy?" was all Dawn had to say as she huddled closer to Spike's dirty leather.

Spike shook his woozy head slowly. He spoke very gently, if slightly slurred. "No…no Willow, Buffy. Not yet." He looked to Dawn for confirmation. Dawn stared up at him with pooling eyes. Her chin trembled and she nodded her head in alliance with him.

"What the hell has gotten into the two of you? Are you both insane? In case you haven't noticed, I'm in a freakin' cage! And as soon as I get outta here I'm gonna ground you for a week, Dawn, and slam Spike so far into the dirt-ground he'll never dig his way out."

Spike suddenly broke into a brilliant smile. A chuff of sick laughter passed his lips and he tugged Dawn to him in an ecstatic hug. "She's pissed. Mad as hell at me. That's good, don't you think? Real good."

"Can we let her out now, Spike? Please?"

Spike gently untangled Dawn's fingers from his coat and shifted forward. "Yeah, I'm gonna try it. Stay back, though."

It was Buffy's turn to take a step in reverse as Spike gingerly approached. She'd been wrong earlier - not about the drunk part, because a vapor trail preceded him, but wrong about him not being injured. He was hurt on his hands, head and chin. His shirt was ripped open and long deep red scratches marred his pale chest, crusted over and healing slowly. Defensive wounds. His face was sallow and thin. He looked dead.

"W-What happened to you?" she said, moving back from the door as he produced a key.

He smiled and tears of happiness broke down his face. "You…happened to me."

Buffy let the steaming hot water run over her face as she shampooed and rinsed her hair for the third time, making a vigorous effort to expel two weeks' worth of sweat and filth. They'd need to get a new loofa after this. It felt good, though. The bathroom door opened.

"Buffy? You still okay in there?" It was Dawn, checking on her for the fifth time.

"Yeah, I'm fine. I'm getting out now." She gargled a hot mouthful of water. Copious toothbrushing was called for next. Two weeks in the sewers gave a girl a royal case of yuck-mouth.

Dawn was waiting for her with a towel - make that several - sitting on the toilet with her knees bouncing. Buffy lifted the first terrycloth layer and wrapped her hair up in it. Best to keep that rat's nest hidden until a half-hour of brushing and detangling could be scheduled. She took the second and wrapped it around her body as she hunted the medicine cabinet for dental care supplies.

"Uh, where's my toothbrush?"

"Oh!" Dawn gulped like she'd been punched in the gut. "I…think we tossed it. Tara or Willow…seeing as we thought you were…"

"Dead, yeah, I get that. I'm using one of yours."

"Ew! Gross."

Buffy shot her a look and squeezed a length of blue swirl AquaFresh on the bristles and began the scrubbing again. Dawn sat as patiently as she could, watching her, nearly as transfixed as Spike had been. He'd drawn her out of the cage slowly, hands out, yet not quite touching her, keeping a hovering guard around Dawn as she rushed up to hug her breathless. She never thought she'd see the day when Spike needed to protect Dawn from _her_, but here it was.

"Where are the others?" she'd asked Dawn on the walk home. Dawn had brought her clothes from her own closet to wear. They were long on her and a little tight in the hip, but it worked.

"Oh, they're in the desert."

"The desert?"

Spike had cleared his throat - his step had been a bit weavy, but his head was amazingly clear. Vampires. "Dawn managed to convince them I was holding you someplace out in Joshua Tree. They took right off. Our clever girl's quite the double agent."

"And they left Dawn home by herself?"

Dawn and Spike had shared another nervous look. "Um, not really, Clem's been hanging out with me."

"Clem! They left you alone with Clem?" But then, hadn't she done the same once?

"Easy, Slayer. For a girl whose sister's been Sheena Queen of the Jungle the past few, I can see where they'd opt for a familiar floppy-eared face and a Cosco box of Doritos."

Buffy looked at her reflection as she worked the brush handle, foaming at the mouth. She couldn't help it; she was ticked. And not just for the whole resurrection recap, she'd long gotten over that, but rather that everyone she knew and trusted would unerringly fall over themselves with such Beavis and Buttheaded behavior whenever she ducked out for a little while. From the dead-raising stories Spike and Dawn had told her on the walk home, Giles was livid, Tara was weepy, Xander was stake-happy, Anya was mildly amused, and Willow… well, she knew which cliff Willow was gunning to drive off of, didn't she?

Between them all, it was Spike who had made the best of the situation - assigning Dawn to sabotage Willow's herb stash and feeding them false leads all the while secretly playing crazed-slayer-kidnapping-vampire's advocate while said crazed vampire had done his best to keep untamed Buffy from harming herself or others. _Most others_, she thought, with a lump of guilt. It must have been a hellish two weeks for all of them.

Buffy bent and spit, satisfied that she resembled human again on the outside as well as the inside. Less with the crazy. It was good.

"Did Spike eat?" she asked her sister. "He looks like shit."

"I left him in the kitchen under strict orders to drain the to-go cups. He knows better than to mess with me. I told him I'd make grilled cheese once you got out of the Niagara Falls shower you were taking."

Buffy raised a brow at her as she removed her towel and reached for the robe that was…no longer on the back of the door. Dammit. Being dead, temporarily, sucked. "So who named you Spike's keeper?" she asked her, peering out to make a clear streak across the hallway to Tara and Willow's bedroom. Dawn followed her like a Labrador, practically tripping under her feet.

"Somebody's got to do it," she said, closing the door behind them while Buffy rummaged around for something sweatpanty that might almost fit. "He's been kind of a mess since you…you know…" Dawn made a diving gesture with her hands.

Buffy pulled a Sunnydale University t-shirt over her head and slid into a pair of Tara's yoga pants. No bra, but then at this age, no bra had been her thing. "Spike…" she began, careful with her word choice,"…he'll get better. Give him time."

Spike was sitting at the end of the kitchen counter sipping blood slowly through a straw when Buffy came in, Dawn at her heels. He sat up straight and looked at her as if he still couldn't believe she was back, alive, though she'd been topside for a while.

"You look nice," he said, still a little dazed, but not likely from alcohol. Blood tended to straighten him out. It looked like he hadn't had much in a while. She worked up a smile for him, a forgiving one. Guilt was plastered all over his face as much as the evidence of their recent battles. She wasn't kidding; he looked terrible. The kitchen fluorescents did nothing to mask the thinness, the worry, the exhaustion. She wondered if his faceplant was the first shot at sorta sleep he'd had in days or more.

"Thanks, I'm less smelly at least," she said, taking a stool opposite him while Dawn made good on her threat to grill the snot out of some cheese. Unable to take Spike's gaze for long, Buffy drilled some fingers into her still-tangled mophead. They got stuck and she had to wriggle them out halfway. She glanced at his head-cocked silence - joy and regret played on his lips. "It's okay, Spike. I know you did the best you could."

"I'm sorry about the chains and all…I just…" he was breathing like he couldn't quite get enough air, though his chest moved slowly behind the wounds. "I couldn't let them…" he stopped, glancing over her shoulder at Dawn who was happily scooping margarine into a frying pan. "…take you."

She reached out and squeezed his hand. "I know."

They ate their grotesquely gooey hydrogenated oil-soaked sandwiches and drank their cold tall glasses of milk (or blood) like any dinner eve in the Summers household. Dawn talked about how much school was going to suck when it started next week. Spike talked about how badly the Scoobie bunch had tried to take over patrolling duties, with a number of humorous tales that had her nearly peeing with laughter. It was easy for her this time. Her mind hadn't just been ripped out of paradise. She'd had decades to reclaim mortal life.

Afterwards, she sent Spike to the shower, his destroyed shirt to the trash and his pants to the wash. The coat needed professional cleaning so she left it over the stair railing with a note for Tara or Willow to see to it later - whenever they got tired of chasing their tails in the desert or when Willow found enough wild un-Dawn-tainted herbs to cast a decent locator spell. Then she went upstairs and tucked her sister into bed, holding her close until she fell into a much-needed sleep. Buffy wanted to lie with her until she dropped off herself. It'd been so long since Dawn had been 'little', her long fawn's legs poking under the covers, but there were things to see to.

Buffy was in her old bedroom sealing an envelope and setting it up on her dresser when Spike popped his shirtless torso in.

"Well…seeing as you're all set here - I guess I'll be off." Dawn had found him some old medical scrubs from one of their mother's many hospital visits. He looked like an ex-ER cast member. She sucked in her lip to suppress a giggle. He looked much better, even with fluffy hair and bandages across his stomach.

"Spike, come in. I need to talk to you."

Spike glanced awkwardly back up the hall toward Dawn's room.

"It's okay. She's out cold. Just come in and close the door."

He took a tentative step in as if the mystical barricade that limited vampiric entrance somehow worked a second shift over a slayer's bedroom.

"It's okay," she said with a smile. "I like having you here, Dr. Spike."

"Brilliant," Spike grumbled, clicking the door shut and crossing the room. He took a stiff seat on the edge of the bed next to her at her bidding. His expression softened as he looked her over with perfect bedside manner. "You okay, Buffy? Feelin' fit for being recently dead and crazy and all?"

She took a good solid breath and thumped her chest. "I'm good. Trust me."

He looked at his hands. Although he sat near her, he kept himself turned slightly away, one foot still on the floor while his eyes lit up with a private wonder she knew came from being allowed this rare intimacy. "Dawn and I…we were so worried that we'd lost you."

Buffy lowered her head, her tangled hair scraggling at her shoulders. Still hadn't found that half-hour yet for hair maintenance. "I know. But you did good, Spike. I didn't understand at first. I'm sorry I flipped out."

Spike's fingers twitched in his open palms. "You call _that_ goin' all hammer sack? That was…well, I knew it was Buffy again." His lips twitched in a smile.

"Hard to tell sometimes, I guess," she said, reaching out to caress his arm, a harmless gesture she'd affected a hundred times with him, her fingers brushing over the beautiful form and mold of him.

Spike took a sharp breath at her touch and nearly shifted away. She stopped, holding her hand in mid-air. His head looked like it was being held up only by a monumental effort to shoulder the weight.

This, she reminded herself, was a Spike who had never been truly kissed or held by her. Heck, he'd only just been invited back into her home. But he loved her, so deeply it hurt to look at him. How frightened he must have been these past weeks - how torn and alone after months of grief. No. Not alone. Not completely. She needed to be careful with him - like glass, easily breakable, yet with the right care it would last forever.

"Spike, the way Dawn found you earlier tonight, I need your word that you'll never let that happen again. Ever."

He looked like he wanted to crawl under a rock with shame. "It won't. I promise. Never."

"Good, because I need you to be strong for her. Stronger than you've ever been for her. I need you to remember the promise you made to me, to protect her, forever."

He raised his eyes to hers. "I do. I will. Forever."

"Spike. I need you to let Willow finish the job."

He blinked, utterly confused. "What…?"

"No more hiding. No more running. You'll let her take me in plain sight. You'll let all of them come. Stand down and let them, and I promise they won't harm you."

"Buffy… I don't understand. Willow will see; they'll all see…you. Now. You're fine. Dawn and I were right. You just needed some time."

Buffy felt her throat tighten but she kept her eyes clear on his. "No, Spike. I'm not all right. I'm not fine. I didn't recover. This isn't what it seems. It's an illusion. A temporary fix. It won't last much longer. _Six to eight hours._ I need you to chain me to this bed and wait for Willow to come."

He worked his cheek. His voice was cold and flat as steel as his eyes darted aimlessly. "No. You're wrong. I saved you. We both saved you."

"You didn't. You tried, but you didn't. Listen to me." He started to turn his head, but she caught his face and kept his eyes on hers. "I came back wrong. And as much as you and Dawn want to fix it, it wasn't meant to be fixed. Not this time. I was fine where I was. I was at peace. You have to let Willow send me back…do what she knows she has to do. Promise me."

He looked slain. His mouth moved silently. No.

She leaned in and kissed him. It was all she could think to do. A soft sweet kiss that held, lingering. Neither of them breathed. He made a small pained sound when she released him. He was slow to open his eyes, but when he did, she knew he would grant her final wishes. For her and for Dawn. Especially for Dawn.

Her heart pounded, every inch of her ached to reach out and bring him close, to kiss away the sorrow haunting his eyes - to teach him what it meant to be held and loved. By her. But she knew that wasn't right, wasn't fair, to bring him to heaven's door only to leave him on the threshold alone - forever waiting for an invite. Better not to open the door at all. She turned away from that palpable silence to reach for her hairbrush and began to tug and yank it through her tangles. She could feel it beginning, her consciousness preparing to unmoor from this world. There wasn't going to be enough time to get her hair straight. Dammit.

Cool hands covered her wrist and brought the brush down, easing it out of her grasp. "Don't," he said quietly. "Let me do it."

She shook her head. She shouldn't, it wasn't right or fair. Not for him. Not _this_ him. Tears welled up in her eyes and she brushed them off. Stupid Willow. Stupid contemporary-dimension Willow. Friends were such a pain in the ass. All she wanted was for them to go off and have happy lives and leave her alone. It was easier that way.

"Lie down," he said and she did, rolling away on her side. He went to her old weapons chest, took out a set of chains and threaded them through the metal bedposts. Then he took the clamps and closed them around her wrists and ankles with gentle hands. To think there was a time she would have called this kinky - run wet with excitement, awaiting his hard intrusion. This Spike would never know that. Never gain or lose that. Never win a soul. Not yet, not now, maybe never.

She closed her eyes when he sat on the bed next to her and lifted her shoulders to lay her head in his lap. The cold clasp of the manacles and weight of the chains were eased by the feel of her hair softly lifted thorough long fingers as they began to steadily work the tangled mess free with long gentle pulls of the brush - over and over in silence until she shifted slowly into sleep.

She woke to the sound of children's voices shouting in her face.

"Mommy! Mommy! Wake up!"

_Huh?_ Two rosy-faced three year olds, a boy and a girl, bobbed up and down in her vision. She was lying on a strange bed in a strange room in a strange house.

"Mommy! Daddy says you need to wake up now! He's made hamburgers! And ketchup! And pickles!" The boy tugged at her hand. "Come on, Mommy!"

She sat up, mumbling for her voice. "Yeah, okay, go tell…Daddy…I'll be right down." The two brown-haired blue-eyed children giggled and chased each other back out of the room and down a distant flight of stairs. It was late in the afternoon and the smell of charcoal wafted in through the open window.

Buffy got up and went into the bathroom. Nothing in here was familiar. Towels, soap, deodorant, shaving supplies. A 'Daddy' lived here. With her. Was it Spike? Couldn't possibly be. Not if there were children. Did they adopt? Who would let a slayer and a vampire with no last name adopt?

She peed, flushed and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked about thirty. Her hips felt wider and her tummy was…kinda flabby. She lifted her shirt and pulled down her shorts. Stretch marks had faded to pink, as had the scar running from hipbone to hipbone. C-section. The children were hers. Twins. Bizarre. There was a small diamond ring and wedding band on her hand. Even more bizarre.

She washed her face and hands and walked tentatively down the hallway to the stairs. Furniture and wallpaper greeted her, all foreign and surreal. The patio door was open in the back, leading out to the yard from where cooking smells and children's squeals emanated. Bravely, she stepped out into the spring air.

She froze, dazed and confused, blinking through the slanting sunrays of the late afternoon at the face of her husband, who was standing over the smoking sizzling grill with a warm smile and spatula.

"How do you want your hamburger, sweetheart?"

_Holy flipping hell. I'm Mrs. Riley Finn._


	3. Guinevere

**Shards III: Guinevere**

"So what's it gonna be, babe? Cooked or a little bloody?"

"Huh?"

Her husband laughed, waving the spatula at her teasingly. "Your hamburger. If you want it juicy it needs to come off the grill now."

_Mrs. Riley Finn. I'm Mrs. Riley Finn. Something's seriously wrong with this dimension._

One of the bouncy kidlets rammed into her leg. "Oof!"

"Derrik, settle down. Your mom just woke up. She doesn't need thrown to the pavement."

_Derrik? What a terrible name. And the name of your new son. Smile._

The little sprout hugged her kneecap in a vice grip. "Mommy! I don't like onions. Tell Daddy not to give me onions!" His round-cheeked little face beamed up at her. Weird.

"Uh, sure…Derrik. Don't give him any onions, Riley."

"Orders received, Private," Riley said with a wink to the kid and began to scoop up the steaming meat lumps and grilled onions onto a big Pyrex platter. _Wedding gift? Oh, God, how long have we been married?_ "Can you put this on the table, sweetheart?"

Buffy stepped forward, dragging 'the Derrik,' and took the plate from her husband, then lurched it over to the way-too-cute plastic family picnic table. She set the platter down among the condiments, Jello and potato salad, peeled the child off with an uneasy smile and slid herself onto the bench. The kid climbed up next to her and started beating his paper plate on the daisy decaled surface. "I want Jello, Mommy!"

"Okay," she said, reaching for the big blue spoon.

"Uh-uh," Riley chided, coming over to add a giant bottle of BBQ sauce to the table. "Not until you eat a few bites of burger first."

"But Mommy said okay!"

"I know Mommy said okay, but she knows better." Riley gave her a 'you still half-asleep?' look and took the seat opposite, calling the girl to them. "Come on, Sunshine! Dinner's ready!"

The girl slid down the jungle gym slide, ran across the lawn and climbed up next to Riley. "I want lots of cheese!"

"You got it, baby-girl. Sweetheart, can you fix Derrik's plate?"

"Um, sure." Buffy tugged the paper plate out of the boy's hand and began to assemble bun, lettuce, tomato, cheese…

Riley grabbed her wrist. Buffy jumped. "What?"

"Have you lost it?" Riley said, looking shocked. "You're giving our son _cheese_?"

She dropped the orange square on the table with a 'glap.' "No…I…"

"Mommy! Cheese makes me puke all over the potty!"

"I was…making mine first. Sorry. Wasn't thinking."

Riley let her hand go and dropped the issue with a shrug.

_Okay, this Mommy thing isn't as easy at it looks. Need to be smarter about it._

"Derrik, honey, why don't you tell Mommy what you'd like on your hamburger."

Buffy took stock of her situation during the meal - keeping her mouth full at all times to discourage her foot from flying into it. The air felt different here. It was warm but smelled faintly of barn. The trees were different, shorter and sparser. She didn't think she was in Sunnydale anymore.

No further dietary mishaps occurred, discounting the culinary ack! experience Buffy got from trying to eat a mouthful of the potato salad. "Aunt Ginny sent that over," Riley explained. Whoever the heck that was; she was a lousy cook. Riley loved it, though.

When they were finished, the girl got up and ran to the far end of the large yard to pull on the door of a locked wooden shed. "Can I let Angel out now?"

Buffy's heart froze.

"Sure, now that we're done eating," Riley said. He and Derrik both got up to join her at the shed door. A 'woof' came from within and Buffy relaxed as Riley let out a big loping black Lab. It ran around the yard, sniffing, keeping to the shade. It pissed on a rosebush and came up to lick Buffy's elbow. It stopped and looked at her with droopy brown eyes.

"Woof!" It said, taking a step back. "Woof! Woof! Woof! Woof!"

"Angel!" Riley yelled from where he was lifting the kids into the jungle gym's wooden fort. "Quiet!"

The dog obeyed and sat down. Buffy reached out to Angel with a slow hand. _The dog knows what's up. Stay calm and let it sniff you._ The lab sniffed her thoroughly, from hip to sandals. Then it licked her wrist. She'd do.

"Good dog, Angel," she said and scratched its ears. _What possessed us to name the dog Angel? Unless… this _is_ Angel mystically transformed into dog-shape. Nah, it's eating potato salad globs off the lawn. Would 'Spike' have been a more endearing choice? And while we're on the subject, why do vampires pick such good dog names for themselves? Except for Drusilla of course. This coming from the mother who named her son Derrik and her daughter Sunshine. Bleah._

"Buffy, why don't you go on inside and start packing? I'll clean up out here. We can let the kids play until it's time to go."

She looked around. _Packing for what? Mountains? Beach? Hellmouth?_

"Okay…Honey." She got up and just about sprinted for the safety of the house. All this family stuff was wigging her out.

Once inside she looked around hurriedly to try and gain some bearing. Kitchen. Calendar. What day is it? It was May 2007. How time flies when you're nestled in domestic bliss. Though, strangely, she saw unpacked moving boxes tucked here and there under counters and in corners. They hadn't been here too long. She read the dates. Here we go… Thursday through Saturday were circled in blue felt-tip. A quick look at the time/date clock over the kitchen table revealed it was indeed Thursday. No words of explanation graced the dated squares, but a quick flip revealed other brief periods of mysterious felt-tip 'vacation.' About once a month or so. Hmm…

"Mommy! I want you to pack my dun-dun!" Sunshine had run in from the yard all in a panic. "Pack my dun-dun, Mommy!"

"Okay, sure. Can you find your suitcase for me?"

"What's a ootcase?"

"Uh, overnight bag? Backpack?" _Trashbag? Help me here, kid._

"My Snoopy Pack!"

"Snoopy Pack! Yes, let's go pack Snoopy."

The girl found the Snoopy Pack and handed it to her along with 'dun-dun' who turned out to be a grayish well-loved donkey, maybe. Hard to tell with only three legs. Buffy opened the girl's pink and white dresser and started stuffing in clothes for a two nights' stay somewhere. When it looked like enough, she began selecting from the growing pile of toys the girl was tossing onto the bedcover.

"And I want my pretty flowers and my princess bracelet and my…"

They packed the Snoopy until it resembled a plush sumo wrestler and Buffy carefully worked the zipper shut. Then she shouldered it to go look for Derrik's room. "Come on, Sunshine. Can you take me to your brother's room?"

"Mommy! _You_ don't call me Sunshine! Daddy does!"

She took the small girl's hand and let her tug her up the downstairs hall. "Well, what do I call you? Sunny? Shine?"

The girl stopped and looked at her grumpily. "No!" she said. "You call me my real girl name."

_Sunshine's a nickname, dummy. Your own father used to call you that!_

Buffy flipped the Snoopy around in her hands, looking for a tag. "Oh, that's just Mommy being silly, isn't it…..Emily?"

The little girl smiled and hugged her leg. _Saved by Snoopy._ _God, I'm gonna blow it._

Packing for the boy was harder; he was still outside and it took Buffy twenty minutes just to find a zippered bag in the racing car and speed boat styled room.

"Emily, what does Derrik like to take to…the place we're going?"

"He likes cars, Mommy."

"Cars. Good. I think I can pack cars."

She found a ten-gallon pail full of little plastic cars, airplanes and boats. She made a random two-fisted pick of them along with jeans, socks and t-shirts with superheroes on them. It made her smile. _These are my son's clothes._

She jumped at a rap on the door jamb. It was Riley. "Hey Pumpkin, I got Harry Potter on the TV. Want to come watch with your brother so your Mom can finish up?" _We're running late_, he mouthed at Buffy.

Emily nodded with a chirp of glee and scrambled out of the room past him. Buffy exchanged a smile with her husband who nodded at the gravid Snoopy. "Why are you packing all that? They're just going over to my Aunt's. They've got plenty of toys over there. Clothes are what they need. You know she hates her house filling up with crap."

Buffy sighed and shrugged. She unzipped the two bags and started to defuse them of 'crap.'

"I guess I can't do anything right tonight."

Riley stepped the rest of the way into the room and knelt down next to her, brushing her cheek with his big warm fingers. His touch gave her a strange feeling. She looked away.

"Hey, what's up with you tonight?"

"Me? I don't know. Just…out of sorts. Tired, I guess."

"Even after that long nap? Are you feeling like you're coming down with something? Do you want us to stay?"

"No! No. I want us all to have a good visit with your Aunt. It's fine."

Riley snorted.

"What?"

"You? At my Aunt's? Now there would be a memorable weekend. We're lucky she likes the kids well enough to take them while I'm away so you can patrol."

"Oh!"

"Oh, what?"

"Oh. Oh, I see. _You're_ taking a trip." _Somewhere. Special Ops ROTC? Weekend Demon Warriors?_

Riley looked worried. "Yeah, like I've done every month for the past six years. Buffy, you've got me concerned, here."

Buffy laughed, a little too high and quick. "Got ya, soldier-boy!" Wink. "As if I'd give up a weekend all to myself."

"Oh! Oh! You're terrible. Come here!" Riley took the joke and pounced on her, pinning her neatly to the Hot Wheels rug. She squealed and kicked because that's what she would have done or did do back when they used to spar and…kiss. His mouth was on hers and she willed herself to soften, to accept it and summon up the warmth to return it. She put her arms around his neck and hung on while he slipped his tongue in her mouth, weaving it around. So strange to be kissing a warm tongue. It left her cold. She pinched him under his shirt and he let her go.

"Hey, that's playing dirty, Buffy."

"Don't you know it. Now go get packed, Rambo. I've got cars to put away."

She watched the sixth Harry Potter movie with her kids and 'Angel' until Riley came tromping down the stairs with a big black bag and a heavy weapons case.

"Okay, kids! Let's get going!"

"But Daddy! The movie's not over!"

"I want to stay with Mommy this time!"

"I know we all do, but Mommy has to go to work tonight and you guys need to go to bed as soon as we get to Aunt Ginny's."

"But, Daddy…!"

"No butts unless they're in their carseats, now come on!"

Buffy shut off the TV by hand. _Not gonna even try to figure out those remotes. _She helped peel the twins off the couch. Derrik got up but soon took a sulky run back up the stairs toward the master bedroom.

"Derrik!" Riley bellowed and looked to Buffy. "Dammit, that kid. Doesn't listen. I'm really late, babe."

"I'll go get him."

"Get their coats, too!" Riley said as he opened the front door.

"Why? It's warm. Are you sure they'll need them?" _Please don't make me search like a dumb-ass for the coat closet._

"Yes!"

Buffy found the coats in a closet by the kitchen and her son trying to hide under their upstairs bed. She flattened down to peer at him.

"What are you hiding for, sweetie?"

Derrik frowned. "I don't wanna go to Aunt Ginny's."

"Why not? Sounds like you're going to have fun over there."

"But can't you come, too?"

"I need to stay here and work, sweetie. I'm sorry."

"But if you stay all by yourself you'll make Daddy mad again."

"Daddy's not mad; he's just late. He needs you to come downstairs right now so you can get going."

"But Mommy… last time you stayed it got Daddy mad and then we had to leave Cal-for-na."

"I don't know what you're talking about, sweetie. Come on out. I'll get you a cookie." The cookie bribe always worked on Dawn. Worked on Derrik, too. Even if she had no clue where the cookies might be.

"Okay," the little boy sighed and wriggled out. "Just don't get Daddy mad again, Mommy. Promise?"

"I won't. I promise."

"Thanks," Riley said at the driver's side door, leaning out to give her a goodbye kiss. It was dark now. The kids were in their his and hers carseats - bags and coats all stuffed between them. Buffy wrote off the whole conversation with Derrik under the bed as child's fancy. There was nothing about Riley that was ever threatening or angry…for the most part. She kissed him back easily this time, relieved they were all leaving.

"No problem. Looking forward to having some peace."

"I'll call you when I get to the rendezvous. My Aunt will bring the kids back on Saturday morning. Crack o' dawn so get some beauty sleep Friday night."

_Won't be around by then._ "I will."

"Oh, and don't forget to feed Angel. I left some raw hamburger in the meat tray. Nice and bloody. Just how he likes it."

"Uh, okay."

Riley leaned close again but instead of kissing her, just looked her in the eye. The long searching gaze unnerved her. _What?_ He pulled back. "Be careful," he said and got in the SUV, starting the engine.

Buffy waved until they were around the corner then went back into her strange home and fed the strange dog. After queasily watching Angel slurp down a half-pound of runny raw ground round - _God, I hope you're just a dog—_she flipped on the TV.

The 10 o' clock news was recapping the gory excavation of a collapsed strip mall in Greenview, a small farming town 70 miles south of Des Moines. _Des Moines? Iowa? I'm living in frigging Iowa?_

"Rescue teams are still searching for bodies now more than 72 hours after the incident. Aging cement supports are being blamed for the structure's collapse last Monday afternoon killing a confirmed 45 shoppers with 64 still reported missing…"

Lovely. Death was everywhere, even in Iowa. She shut off the TV and nudged the snoozing dog. "Wanna go patrolling, Angel?"

The dog kept at her side, sniffing the curb and peeing on trees, as Buffy walked the length of their small suburban neighborhood. It was after eleven by now, she guessed. Vamping hour - if Iowa even had vampires. She'd wasted a half-hour searching the house for a weapons chest. With the kids to protect, it was probably buried and locked a mile away. It was pointless to try and find it so she made a homemade stake from an old broom handle and headed out with her furry, possible-vampdog companion in tow.

She walked, humming a tuneless song, past the dark homes filled with happy sleeping Iowins (or was it Iowanns?) all tucked in their beds…until she realized she'd walked everywhere there was to walk, right to the far edges of the town where the asphalt crumbled into dusty cornfields.

_Where the heck is the cemetery?_

Frustrated, cold, and feeling more than just a little stupid, she headed back to the house. _Some slayer I am._ It was 1 a.m. by the time she got back to her 'home.' She shut off the lights and went upstairs. Angel curled up at the foot of the bed and went to sleep as she got undressed and stepped into the bathroom to take a shower.

_Well, I really blew it in this world tonight, _she thought later while drying off. She stood at the mirror in a towel combing the leave-in cream rinse through her hair - the expensive kind. Riley must make bank. Being married not so bad for hair follicles. The rest though… complete ball-up_. Almost killed one kid with cheese and broke the heart of the other by forgetting her name. I guess calling it a night is the smartest thing you could do right now, 'Mommy', and then we're off for who knows…_

Spike was standing in the bathroom doorway.

"Shit!" Her comb fell to the floor.

He didn't move, just glared at her.

"Jesus, Spike. Can't you knock? I can't see you in the mirror!"

He cocked his head slow. His eyes were ice. "S'posed to meet me, weren't you?"

"Meet you? Where?"

"It's comedy you're going for, eh?" His voice was as cold as his eyes. "Not in the mood for chuckles, pet."

"Spike, get out of my way. I need to get dressed."

He looked her up and down, his tongue moving behind his upper lip like it did when he was contemplating the urge to vamp.

_Okay, here we go. Is he bad or good? Or ambiguous? My vote's for ambiguous tonight. From the hair and nails I'd say no soul, chip likely - given current husband and state of invite - but is the chip getting a read on my probably-not-been-resurrected body, or overriding on Buffy's once-was-dead consciousness? Which part came back wrong? _

Spike vamped full-out and pinned her to the wall in a flash of leather. It hurt where her head hit the tiles, but maybe not quite enough to fire the fickle electrodes. Fangs hung bared an inch from her nose accompanied by a low growl._ Still undecided._

"Why weren't you waitin' for me, bitch?" He had caught both her wrists in one hand and held them up over her cream-rinsed head while the rest of his night-cooled fingers slid under her towel and up between her legs. She shivered. "Not even wet for me?" he hissed though his teeth. "What good are you to me, then? Ought to drink you right now, leave you limp on the bloody floor." His fangs grazed her neck, but she didn't flinch. She knew him too well to know when he was boasting. His cock was a rock up against her thigh. God help her, she'd be wet soon.

"Spike, let me go."

He ran his tongue up her throat. "No."

"Let me go or Riley'll…"

_Wham!_ The ceramic cracked as Spike's fist hit the tiles next to her head. "Never. You _never_ say his name to me. You think I don't dream every night of ripping off his head and crunching it to pulp under my boots? Do you?"

_Shit, what the hell was this?_

She struck out, kicking Spike across the small bathroom floor and into the sink cabinets, giving them a good cracking to match the opposing damaged wall. "You're going to back off, Spike! Right now. Or so help me, I'll…"

Spike's bitter laugh stopped her. He was in human face again, laughing at the scuffed linoleum between his sprawled legs. "Stake me? You gonna off me, Buffy? First night in sodding months you get alone with ol' Spike and you want to spend it hurling wooden pointies at my chest? You go right on, then. Be better for both of us."

"Spike, what the hell are you talking about? This is my _home_." This is _Iowa_…what the fuck is Spike doing in Iowa?

"Well, love. What'd you expect? You don't come knocking on my door…I come, well, not knocking on yours."

"Fine. Play games. I couldn't come to you tonight because…" _Are you going to tell him you got lost? The slayer couldn't find the cemetery. Vampires of Iowa beware! Your free wheeling nights of Jiffy-popping popcorn are about to come to a sloppy end as soon as the slayer buys a Thomas Guide._

"Oh save it, Buffy. I don't want to hear it." Spike said, getting slowly to his feet. His fury was dissipating as he brushed grout dust from his coat. "Your domestic excuses mean sod-all to me anymore."

Angel, the dog, trotted in and went right over to Spike, wagging its tail and sniffing Spike's boots before raising up on hind legs to accept a good head-scratch. "Least Peaches is always happy to see me. Stupid git dog."

"Spike, what do you want?" she asked, though she already knew.

He raised the scarred brow at her. "What do you think I want? Drop the bloody towel and fuck me, Slayer, or else I'll be off gettin' rat-arsed at the corner bar with the rest of armpit America."

He had her over the end of the bed, his feet on the floor, her face in the sheets with her rear up between his hands. His hips struck her ass in hard wild thrusts. His cock felt huge, jammed up as far in as she could take it in this position. He was brutal, ruthless, growling. And God, it felt good.

"Haven't had you in forever," he groaned in agonized delight as he fucked her. "Neither has vanilla shake, has he? Don't smell him. Don't smell where he's been parkin' his prick. Been taking long showers has he?"

"Spike, shut the fuck up."

"Very well. Don't like to talk much when I'm having my bit of rough. Turn over."

He pulled out and she flipped onto her back. A thick dribble of come ran out of her while she waited for him to lift her legs up and jam a pillow under her ass. Two orgasms gone already and he hadn't softened a bit for all their spurty gusto. He must not be much for the long showers himself. Just as well, she was just getting warmed up.

"Spike, catch that mess, will you?"

He was already loaded back in, ready to ride. "Huh?"

"Your drippings. I don't want them staining the bedsheets."

"That's what you call it now when I cough-up outta your quim? Drippings? How very Midwest. Live with it. Like you're too good to scrub the marital linen with Spray-n-Wash."

"Asshole."

"Oh, you'll be getting some drippings there, too. Mark my words."

Sore, yet drenched head to painted toes in exhausted bliss, Buffy rolled over in the wide bed and listened to Spike rummaging around the dark room for his pants.

"Bloody, buggering…you take my lighter again, Buffy?"

"No," she mumbled from the pillows. She'd have to burn some of the slip covers for all the mess they'd made on them. Part of her knew this-world-Buffy would be appalled at her hijacked-self's carelessness, but then _she'd_ been the one to invite the vampire in, not her.

_You were supposed to meet me._ What did they usually do, fuck between the tombstones?

"Here it is. Under the stinkin' bed. It's a fucking disaster under here. Kid toys, dog chews. You ever clean around here?" The lighter flickered and illuminated his sharp pale features as the cigarette took flame. She sat up.

"Are you insane? Take that thing outside!" Come stains were one thing. Cigarette smoke, that was as hard to hide as blood.

"Was gonna," he said and helped himself to the already opened bedroom window. He climbed out and had himself a seat on the sloping roof, naked but for his half-buttoned jeans.

"Pig," she muttered and got up to flip on the bedroom light. There were bruises, of course, fading already on her arms and yes - oh, yes - between her thighs where he'd forced her apart to devour her throbbing sex. Her ass still burned from the stinging blows he'd brought down on her cheeks, much to her begging, hollering abandon. Worse, for all their untamed mating, she still ached deep inside for more and more. _God, I'm a slut._

She wiped herself down in the bathroom before coming back out to dress and follow her demon lover out the window.

Spike was on his third cigarette when she joined him, sitting on the opposite side of the bedroom's lamplight where it broke out over the shingles and across the backyard lawn to the emptiness beyond. Iowa.

She sighed. No words. _Not much changes, does it?_

"So, get on with it," Spike said, taking a sharp drag.

"Huh?"

"Get on with your reparations and resolutions and regrets. I've got a few cigs in me. I'm ready."

"I…don't…"

"Yeah, you bloody well do, every time. This is it, Spike. No more, Spike. Don't ever come around again, Spike. If my husband finds out again, Spike…blah, blah, bleedin' blah. Your mouth says No, but your cunt always says, Right here, right now. Shag me rotten."

"I'm sorry."

A bitter chuckle left his chest as he killed the butt on the roof tile. He wasn't looking at her: the stars, the endless fields, the charcoal grill and swingset below, yes. Her, no. "You're not sorry. Not deep down, anyway. It's what gets you hot, all this playin' hide and seek with the vampire."

"Then why did you follow me here? To Iowa of all places?"

Spike drew his lips tight and shook his head. "Couldn't do it, Buffy. Couldn't let him win. Take you away like that. Like he thought he could. Like he forgot I could track you. Over land no less. Some brains that boy's got. Didn't even think to take you away by air. But even then I'd've found you. I'd've crossed every state line in this sodding country to find you - nose to the dirt, sniffing you out. You call to me, Slayer. You always do. And I can't seem to do a bloody thing about it."

So that's how it was. Riley had found out about their affair at some point. Moved them, the whole family, away from California, Spike, the Hellmouth, to here where he had family. A fresh start. How very sad for them. And here she'd waited, standing in the cornfields, calling silently into the night for the demons to come slinking right after her.

"We have to be careful," she said.

Spike laughed again, mirthless. "Here it comes. There's my girl, gettin' all skittish now." He turned to look at her and his coldness chilled her through. His lips were set at such a cruel line. He was hating her, yes, but hating himself even more. They hadn't kissed tonight. Not once.

"The children, Spike. You need to understand. I can't …risk them." _They're not even mine. Not really._

He looked wounded. "Understand? Everything I did was for those bloody kids. Keeping an eye on them while you and Captain Cardboard went off trotting through the graveyards lookin' for nasties. I traded the hunt and the kill for a chance at something real - to prove myself to you, that you could trust me. Always. With your most precious……_fuck_." His voice had softened to a whisper and he was near tears, though he fought them back. "Shame on you. You made those babies with _him_, but then you put them in my dead arms to keep them safe - because _he_ wasn't strong enough to protect them. That you did. You heartless bitch. You know how I miss those little ducklings, and now, all's I get to see when I crawl through the window is the sodding _dog_."

"Uh…speaking of the dog…it isn't…?"

A pop and a whizzing sound cut through the air. Spike brought his hand up to his neck. "Ow! Bleeding mosquitoes…."

Buffy crossed the window light. A small black dart with a red tail was stuck in his neck. She yanked it out and threw it to the ground just as Spike began to go limp in her arms. "Spike! Oh, God. We need to get you inside, now!"

"Huh? Bloody hell, slayer, put me…"

She held him and braced against the slanted roof with her bare feet as another pop and whiz shot past them, pinning itself to the roof trim, narrowly missing Spike's leg. _They're aiming for him. _She grunted and gave a huge shove, pushing Spike in through the open window and onto the bedroom floor. She followed after, landing in his limp arms.

She lifted his head. His eyes were open, but he'd lost all control of voluntary movement. "What the hell is going on!" she demanded.

"They're heeere," Spike said.

"Who's here…?" A thunderous crash from downstairs cut her off as an ear-splitting shatter came from the bathroom window. Masked men in black Initiative suits and tazers came pouring into the house, crashing down doors and glass. Buffy threw herself over Spike, ready to fight for both their lives if she had to.

One of the men approached, aiming a stake-loaded crossbow at them. "Step away from the hostile, ma'am! Now!"

"No! What do you think you're doing? This is Agent Finn's home!"

"We know ma'am, now step away from the hostile or we'll have to secure you."

"I'd like to see you try."

Three more men kicked in through the bedroom door and more could be heard now shouting out in the backyard. They'd sure come on fast. Like they'd been lying in wait, like they'd…oh, _shit_.

The tallest of the masked men put down his gun and came to stand over them sprawled on the floor by the foot of the tousled bed. The mask came off, peeled back like a black cowl.

"Hi, honey. I'm home."

Spike was bound now as well as drugged. Propped up against the wall, he looked about the room with an air of resigned inevitability. The serum had zapped his muscles, but his mind appeared to be intact. He seemed to understand with every bit of clarity how phenomenally screwed they both were.

Riley barked orders at the men in a stern controlled voice. He had them surrounding the place in the offhand chance Spike sprouted bat wings and managed to fly out the window - which now housed a sniper. The dog was kenneled in the bathroom, where the occasional snuffle and 'woof' emanated from under the door.

Buffy sat on the end of the bed, her hands in her lap. This was such a gianormous mess. She felt remarkably bad for the real Mrs. Finn who she knew wouldn't find this Greek tragedy the least bit off the map. No, this-world-Buffy had made this bed. She'd just been the one to lie in it - for the better part of a panting, grunting three hours. Spike used to go for five. Must be the Iowa pig's blood. If there was a butcher to be had in this no horse town. She hadn't seen one on her aimless slaying march earlier.

"I'll take that crossbow, Agent Tailor. Okay, men, clear out. Leave us. I've got the room under control." Her husband stayed in 100 GI Joe mode until the men filed out and the sniper at the window slid the glass shut. Then his eyes turned to her and for the first time in her life with Riley - wholesome, kind, Riley - Buffy felt a little afraid of him.

_Please Mommy, don't make Daddy mad. _

"Riley, I…"

"Shut-up, Buffy."

"But this isn't what you…"

"What? You think I'm as stupid as he is?" Riley said with a nudge of the loaded crossbow in Spike's direction (who, in spite of his drugged state, seemed for once to know when to keep quiet). "I don't need to be a vampire to smell what went on in here tonight. God! It reeks of you two!" He took two booted strides over to the bed and held up the still-damp sheets as evidence.

"You set me up," she said coldly. "You had no intention of going off to play war games. This was a trap from the very start!"

"You're damn right it was a trap!" he said, pacing the bed. "Did you think I wouldn't find out? Wouldn't decipher the hint of bruises here and there, the fang points dotting your skinny neck? You told me you got all those in a fight. But I suspected. I've seen those marks before."

She lowered her eyes. All she felt now was a need to get through this, keep it perking along long enough until the old Buffy came back. She couldn't even begin to fix this; it wasn't her fault; it wasn't her life, dammit! _Yeah, because in your world you were such a stellar girlfriend you managed to run both of them out of town in a fit of Buffy-made crazy._ But at least there weren't children involved. _Oh, God, the kids! Think about the kids! This-world-Buffy must love them, I know she does!_

Riley was still talking - voice hard and even like he'd been rehearsing. "You promised me, Buffy, that if I let it go, let it all go - the cheating, the lies - you'd let _him_ go and move away from California and all the bad memories and start over again if I promised not to kill him. And I did. I took us someplace safe where a vampire is a vanishing species, and still you couldn't stop yourself from inviting him in! Into our home, and into our bed!"

"I'm so, so sorry, Riley. I promise, this is it. Never again. Never." _The kids, those poor kids._

"I've heard that line before, Buffy. Now give me another. Give me the line where you tell me this was all a lie - our marriage, our family. Give me the line where you tell me you never loved me. That I was never good enough for you because I'm just less of a man. A soul makes no difference to you, does it? You didn't want a husband. What you wanted was a monster. And I've figured it out, Buffy. You want the monster because you _are_ a monster."

Her eyes shot up at him. "That's not true!"

"Isn't it? Then explain it to me, babe. How is it that I can't leave our home for a few hours before you're spreading your legs for this sick, disgusting beast?"

"Maybe because you weren't meant to be the long-haul guy, mate."

Spike's voice made them both jump. Riley crossed the room and proceeded to beat Spike's head in with the heavy butt of his crossbow. _Wham! Wham! Wham!_ Blood hit the wall behind Spike's slumped body, and all he could do in his own defense was laugh.

"Riley! Riley! Stop it! Stop it now! You want me to confess? Give you a line? Okay, I will! You're right; I don't love you! Okay? You hear me?" _Wham! Wham!_ "Woof! Woof! Woof!" "I don't love you!" "Woof! Woof!" _Wham!_

Riley stopped. "Quiet, Angel!" The dog quit barking as Spike slid to the floor in a mass of blood.

Buffy felt tears leaking from her eyes. _All my fault. All of this._

Riley ignored the gurgling vampire and came back to stand before her, face calm, loaded weapon still held across his Spike-spattered chest. "Now that both of the animals are silent, go on. I'm listening."

Buffy wiped the tears from her face. "You're right, okay? There is something wrong with me. _Is there?_ I can't love like normal people should. I try but I just can't. I wish I could stop this thing with Spike, but it won't stop, it just won't." _I wanted a spell for me, Buffy. I wanted something, anything, to make this feeling stop. I just wanted it to stop_… "I want him. I do. God, look at me! Covered in bruises and bites and…what kind of mother fucks a vampire the second her husband and children leave the house? How, how would this happen if there wasn't something wrong with _me_?" Her eyes returned to Spike who lay limp in the floor, like a lump of bloody hamburger waiting to be eaten by vampire dogs.

Riley stared down at her with revulsion and pity. "I told you if I ever saw his disgusting face again, I'd kill him."

She nodded. "I know." She did know, didn't she?

"But this time, I'm going to make that threat stick." He went for the crossbow now, loosening the tension and disarming it. Oh, thank God. She'd said the right thing. He took the pointed projectile in his hand and held it out to her. "You're going to do it. After all, it is your calling."

Her hands shook. "What?"

"The kids. I told you they were going to Aunt Ginny's. I lied. They've been put on a plane. They're long gone. Far away. Someplace you'll never find them again. Not even a vampire could track them. They'll be told you're dead and buried and in time learn to forget you. Unless…" He inched the blunt end of the stake closer to her.

Sickness crawled up in her gut and she swallowed it down. This was worse, so much worse. "You can't," she said.

"Can't? It's already done. You like getting these second and third chances, Buffy. I know you do. You just keep on coming no matter what life throws at you. It's why I married you. It's why I loved you. You never give up. But that's all in the past now. I don't give a damn about you. It's the kids I care about, the ones who have my heart, my loyalty. It's why I took you back. But now, it's the kids who need second chances, not you." She didn't need to ask him if he was serious. She knew he wouldn't be swayed with more lies and prostrated promises. His mind was set, had been for a long time, she could see it in his cold dull eyes. She'd been killing Riley for months, maybe years - a long chronic disease.

Buffy took the stake from her husband and got up on numb legs. Spike lay on the floor, still conscious though blood dripped from his wounds down over his beautiful face. She knelt beside him, tears flowing again from the depth of her traitorous heart. He looked helpless, defenseless, abused. And not just by the butt of a crossbow.

His lips moved into a cruel red grin. "So it's pointy stakes between us after all tonight, eh, Slayer? Only right after the drilling I gave you, I suppose. Do it, Buffy. Give it me good. I'm the piece that doesn't fit. You know it. End this miserable cock-up. Come on!"

Buffy raised the stake up, clenched it tight in her fist. She looked deep into those blue blue eyes. Beneath all the brazen bravado lay the endless expanse of his desperate longing for her, which he'd clung to long past any hope. Hatred and love turned on a knife's edge, cutting him to shreds. Only one way out. She cried out and let the stake fly, behind her, and into the meat of Riley's left leg.

"Dammit, Buffy! Men! Secure the scene!"

More glass and doors crunched and shattered as the troops came bursting back in. Riley was no idiot. He knew he couldn't take her alone.

Pinned down under a dozen or more steely boot heels, Buffy felt her wrists and ankles being tied behind her and tightened. She couldn't move. They left her on the floor lying next to Spike who spit big globs of blood out of his mouth each time he tried to breathe to speak. They'd beaten him some more, just for good measure.

"Married life's a bitch; innit, Slayer?"

She closed her eyes. "Spike, _please_ shut up."

Riley was ordering people around again, assembling a new strategy. This time he was leaving men in the room. His leg was bandaged. He'd live, of course. The kids needed a dad, too. Even if he was proving to be a complete lug-head.

"Sit her up," he ordered and she was sat up, two men to either side of her.

"Are you happy now?" she asked. "Is this how you treat your wife?"

He motioned to his bleeding leg. "Is this how you treat your husband?"

Maybe the kids would be better off without either of them.

"So what, you're gonna kill us both now?" she asked bitterly.

Riley came down on his good leg to look her in the eye. "If I wanted Assface dead, I'd have done it myself long ago. But he did us a favor once, for the kids. So I gave him a second chance, too."

"Awful bloody kind of you - ow!"

Riley punched Spike in the gut. "Call it folly on my part. The problem here isn't whether or not Spike gets killed. The problem is getting you to see _why_ he needs to be killed."

She shook her head. "You'll never convince me. You know it. I'm sure I've told you a hundred times. I don't care what he's done in his past. He's changed; he's not that man anymore. What he's done for me and my friends and my family - it changes all that. It gives him a chance."

Riley clucked his tongue. "That so? Then explain this to me." He nodded to one of his men who produced a photo. Riley held it in front of her face. It was a surveillance shot of a demolition site. A bowl of broken concrete and exposed girders and in the middle of it all, bodies. Dead, or nearly dead, twisted and broken bodies - children, too. It was awful. She turned away.

"Look," Riley said, grabbing her chin to face the image. "Upper left."

Spike was in the photo. She hadn't realized it at first because he was covered in concrete dust, but not his mouth. Oh, no, not the mouth. It was…glistening.

"Mall collapse, the one on the news? Some of my men were called up to Greenview to help locate the bodies. They found some that were still alive, thank God, some not so alive, and others, well, missing a lot more blood then they should have been. He got caught on camera, Buffy. That's how I knew he was back. What I didn't know was if you'd let him in our front door yet or not. Now I've got all the answers I need."

Her heart stung with the cruel reality she was seeing in the photo. Spike _feeding_ on victims? It couldn't be. It was a set-up, a doctored photo to get her to…

"Impossible, Riley. He can't. The chip. He _can't_. He's harmless_." _She shot a glance at Spike, but his eyes were closed. Possibly passed out from his injuries or the drugs.

"Right, the chip," Riley echoed. "The HST Behavior Modification Project was decommissioned eight months ago. Chip's been out of service for a while now, Buffy, and you knew it. How else was Spike able to get these bruises on you?" he said, pointing to her thighs. "You thought rough sex didn't count? The chip doesn't know any better."

_I must have thought it was just me. If I died. Did I die here? In this world. Why has no one mentioned Dawn?_

"But, Spike can't. He wouldn't. This is just another trick! You're trying to get me to kill him, for your own sick pleasure and I won't! I won't!"

Riley tapped his fingers on his knee. He looked bored. "Why don't you ask Spike where he's been getting his buffet dinners the past week? There's no butcher for 70 miles around here. This is a corn-feed processing town. No meat processing or packing allowed - flies, Salmonella. Could contaminate the stock. Corn's what keeps this town alive. Not so for vampires."

Buffy wriggled in her bonds to face her demon. Spike's eyes opened slowly but he wouldn't look at her. He'd been awake the whole time.

"Spike," she said, her voice thickening with dread. "Tell me what's going on."

He didn't speak at first, just stared into the carpet with red-stained eyes. "Thought they were dead, Buffy," he said.

She felt sick. "…what?"

"Chip didn't fire, I thought…" His voice failed and he coughed up another mouthful of blood. Human blood. Victim's blood.

"But…you can hear their hearts…you would _know_, Spike."

"I…can bite or hit if it doesn't harm…it's why I can hurt you when we… I thought…" he said something else but she wasn't close enough to hear it. She struggled at her wrist bonds.

"Dammit, Riley! Let my hands go so I can hear him!"

Riley nodded and her hands were freed. She wriggled close and held his face to hers so he couldn't look away. "Tell me."

"Thought if I didn't feel the pain, they must be too far gone. No help. No chance. The blood, it got hold of me, Buffy…could smell it for miles and miles…couldn't help it …poor things…hardly nipped 'em..."

Her hands pressed into his injured face and he moaned. She loosened her grip. "But you _know_ better, you know it's wrong. Spike, my God. They're people. It wasn't the chip you were supposed to trust to guide your conscience, it was your…"

"Soul?" he choked with a red-toothed grin. "Sorry, pet. Fresh out."

"I was going to say love. Love of me."

Spike's bludgeoned gaze cut at her. "Bit one-sided now, wasn't it?"

She closed her eyes and let him go. _Good or bad, are you decided, now?_

"You gambled it all on a dead heart, didn't you, Buffy?" Riley said. "Did you think the promise of your body would be enough to turn a monster into a man? That sex was all there was to it? That it was all any man or thing would ever need from you? I don't know who's more to blame here. Beauty or the beast."

She turned on him, hatred flashing through her. "Take a good look at what it's done to _you_. Kidnapping your own children? Yes, these are the many powers of my charms. I turn men into animals and animals into…"

The dog was barking again. "I can't stand it! Will somebody just tell me if the goddamn dog used to be a vampire?"

Riley answered her by placing a stake back in her hand and backing slowly away. He signaled the men to back off as well. This was her final test, a last chance to get it right. _Why did this have to happen now? It's not my fault. I'm not the one who fucked this up so badly. Am I? Because I couldn't make a choice - didn't have the heart to love Riley or the guts to love Spike, so I screwed them both._

She started to weep. Spike's eyes were on her, clouded with terrible shame and love, always love - no matter what. She reached for him again and pressed a kiss to his bleeding mouth. He tasted like death.

"Do it, Buffy," he said when they parted, all pride and ego stripped away to the frightened, tormented soullessness within. "Bastard's right for once. I am a monster. Can't help it. I tried, God knows I tried, but you're not. He's wrong about you. I know it. You'll make this right. You'll make it good again. Do it for your babies…_our_ babies," he whispered. "Please, Buffy. They can live without me, forget me. Probably already have. I was no good. Never was. But they can't get on without _you_. Do it. God, please just DO IT!"

Her arm came up; quick and deadly instinct took over and she struck. The stake broke through the pale skin and drove cleanly into the silent heart. Spike's eyes shot wide for one piercing second and then closed and collapsed into a silver cloud of heavy dust.

A wave of shock took her. Her fingers dropped the stake and reached forward into the carpet, parting a path through the soft fresh remains. Spike's remains. Dust to dust, never to return. Big gulping sobs welled up in her, threatening to break her chest apart, though they'd never come. Not all of them. Not enough tears in the world for the pain this brought. _This was my fault. I did this. He'll suffer in hell now, just like Angel suffered, and all for me. Because I put my babies in his arms and asked him to love them, protect them forever. Who will protect him now?_

She wept as she clutched the ashes in her hands, rubbed the gray silk over her face and knees, through her hair. _My lover, my heart, my knight in black leather. I wish I could have done better. For you and for her, the Buffy who will wake to this nightmare and go broken to the broom closet, to fetch the Dirt Devil, forever cloistered in this hellish life. _

_The wages of sin are death_—they say. And damned if she didn't know how to make bank.

In the bathroom the dog barked and barked. Someone let it out and Angel came to her side, sniffing the dust on the floor. It sneezed and wagged its tail, laying its head on her knee, waiting to be scratched as the scene faded and Buffy fell away into blackness.

Buffy woke with the terrible pain of loss still in her throat. Her face was dry of tears, but her body felt bruised and tired. Not by love, but by battle. She'd been in a hell of a fight. Someone lay next to her in the bed. No, on top of it. She struggled to open her eyes, heavy with bone-deep exhaustion. The air smelled funny and the light was wrong. Orange and dull.

Spike was sleeping beside her, his face etched with healing scars and burns. Her heart leapt in shock and she sat up. _Oh yes, that's right. Another world. Another chance. Oh, thank goodness. Spike. _She slipped out of the covers and crawled up next to him, wrapping her arms about him in deep relief. He stirred and woke, sleepy blue eyes regarding her closeness with quiet wonder. His arms were shy, shifting to hold her delicately as if she'd break or else break him with her clinging.

"What is it?" she asked.

His lips were dry. He looked hungry, though he kept it at bay. Easily. His soul was in his eyes. Oh, she'd forgotten how beautiful it was when he let it show. Here there was no doubt, no failure to read his heart. His goodness.

"We're alive," he said, daring to touch her cheek.

"Yes we are. Of course." He looked so sad. "I'm so glad. Shouldn't we be glad?"

Outside came the sounds of distant thundering and under it the moans and cries of suffering. Red light filtered though the dirty shuttered window of the hotel room.

"What's happened, Spike?" she asked. "What's going on out there?"

"Armageddon," he said.

"Oh."

To be continued in Series…


	4. Seconds

**Shards IV: Seconds**

Armageddon.

The word echoed in Buffy's aching head as she lay in Spike's arms atop their motel bed. As she fought off her sleep, distant flashes of light and low thundering rumbles made their presence known beyond the shuttered windows. The final battle between good and evil played on outside, while here in the comparative calm, Spike rested in her arms_. Who was winning?_ she wondered. Surely not them. But did it matter? She only had a handful of hours to experience 'here' before moving on to the next dimension. Maybe they could just flake on the whole battle-to-end-all-battles thing and vote for a nice slow roll between the sheets instead.

Spike lay beside her, stroking her cheek with the slightest touch while his souled eyes watched hers, connecting. This scene was like a snapshot from their final days, when move by move they'd laid down their weapons and opened their arms to one another - forgiveness and acceptance slowly weaving them back together. Her heart ached for him, captured here in full color - cream, blue, black - not faded and dimmed with memory. This was the Spike she had loved. This was the Spike she had lost. She moved to touch his lips.

He drew a sharp breath and stirred, letting her go to sit up.

"Spike? What's wrong?"

He stood and made for the motel room chair. His t-shirt hung over it, damp from a recent washing. He flapped it out and began to put it on. "We need to get going," he said, avoiding her eyes. "Sun's going down."

Buffy sat up and blinked at the shutters. "How can you tell? The sky is all red and weird. And what are those flashes?"

"Hellfire, or dragon's breath - who the fuck knows anymore. But the sun's leaving us, I can feel it."

"Oh. Where are my clothes?" She was wearing nothing but her bra and panties.

Spike pointed to the bathroom. In the mirror she could see jeans and a blood-stained linen blouse and jacket combo hung up to dry over the shower. Those clothes had been her armor in Sunnydale's last stand against the First. Something must have gone horribly wrong for the sky to turn red and for Spike to still be…Spike.

She looked at him. Fresh pink scars had recently healed across his cheek and chest. "Are you okay?"

He nodded. "Yeah. I'm well enough. How's your head?"

Buffy touched the back of her skull. Hard dried scabs met her fingertips. She must have taken quite a hit. Looks like they didn't have anything to bandage it, either. She was sore everywhere.

"Sorry to hurry you, love. But with night coming on and you bleeding, we'll have uber-vamps storming this place in minutes. We shouldn't have gone to sleep."

She felt her head again. "Well, the bleeding's stopped, I think, so we don't need to worry…"

Spike looked awkward. "Not that bleeding." His nostrils flared and he nodded downward at her crotch.

"Oh, shit." Buffy hurried past him into the bathroom. She'd taken the slight moistness between her thighs to be the simple result of waking up in Spike's proximity. A toilet paper wipe later proved her wrong and Spike's bloodhound nose right. Dammit! This wasn't going to be good. Time was when a menstrual flow meant little more than easy pickings at the graveyard. Vamps would come blindly sprouting out of the ground and into the path of Mr. Pointy. The First's fangy, talony uber-army was another matter. Somewhere off under the red sky she'd heard screams. No, this trip wasn't going to be anything like the slow lazy lovemaking she'd hoped for. But for certain, if they didn't move fast, somebody was going to get fucked.

Buffy dressed, and to her utmost dread, had to improvise with a folded washcloth and safety pins from a mini sewing kit. The bathroom didn't come with complimentary feminine protection. Useless plastic shoehorn, yes. Maxi-pads, no. Who the heck used a shoehorn anymore?

Buffy washed her face and came out. Spike was set, dressed from coat to boots, an axe looped into his belt. He looked anxious to get the hell out of there.

"Look, I know we need to run. But I think we should try and gather a few supplies. You with me?"

He nodded.

"Grab a pillowcase and let's go fill it up."

Out in the hall they rolled a pair of drink and snack machines for meals on the go for Buffy who could feel her borrowed body grumbling with hunger. A quick pause at the linen cabinet for spare towels (for bandages) and washcloths (for other small bleeding issues) and they were off, up to the roof so Spike could get a good look around.

To the west the sky was darkening into a deep velvet black; to the east a thread of red hot light cut just below the horizon, shooting bright flashes up at the cloudy sky. Beyond it, flowing towards them, was an erratic blast radius that shot out for miles on end, felling buildings and crumpling roadways. It was a miracle the motel was still standing. Or at least most of it was. The air was rank with the stink of sulfur and smoke. Spike had fashioned her a breath mask from the end of a bed sheet. Not that the missing managers would mind - she and Spike were the only occupants last night, or for many nights it seemed. What was left of this end of Sunnydale looked as if it had long been deserted. The ground all around them was coated in a fine layer of ash. The clouds passing overhead were composed of the falling, flaming stuff.

"What is that?" Buffy asked, shading her eyes from the falling debris and pointing to the bright gash on the horizon.

"The Hellmouth, I'd imagine," Spike said, coughing. He was alright as long as he didn't need air to speak. His answers came short and to the point. "It's getting wider. We should head west, to the coast if we can. Make our way out by sea."

She nodded. "Sounds good."

Spike jumped off the roof to the sidewalk below and motioned her to jump down after him. She tossed their pillowcase luggage down first and then took the leap into the arms of Hell.

They marched along, following Spike's nose to the sea. He carried the axe and she lugged the pillowcase as they navigated the torn suburban landscape. Gas mains had burst and power lines had fallen, sparking and flaming in the rubble. Broken sidewalks and driveways were periodically flooded with separated water lines. The sewer…Buffy didn't even want to think about the sewer. It was like the mother of all earthquakes had hit Southern California, rocking it to its knees. She wondered how far the damage had spread and if the population had escaped in time. She didn't see any bodies.

They hiked for a solid hour, the wind favoring them, keeping their scent off the keen noses of any demon-life picking over the carnage. Eerie sounds carried over the tumbled city blocks, but none were yet near. Buffy felt more tired then she could ever remember being before. And hungrier. She tugged at the back of Spike's jacket and he slowed.

"I need a minute," she said and they ducked into what was once a laundromat, now sporting a slanting roof and open skylight. Buffy kicked over a surviving laundry basket for a seat and dove into a bag of Super Cheesy Cheetos. Spike leaned back against an industrial dryer, heaving out a long scratchy sigh. He watched her munch with weary interest. She held the bag out to him but he shook his head.

"Food's for you, pet. Won't do me much good. Just get hungrier for all the chewing."

Buffy ate slower, feeling a little guilty, not that there was much she could do about it. Motels didn't carry hemoglobin snacks in their quarter machines. "When's the last time you fed?"

Spike closed his eyes and tipped his head back against the dryer door. "Rather not think too hard on that. But if you see a stray cat, you shout."

She finished off the Cheetos and a pack of Zingers - strawberry, blech - and washed it all down with a Diet Dr. Pepper. Thank God for red dye number 5, keeping slayers fed in post-apocalyptic Sunnydale since…since when, exactly? She didn't have much to go on as to why they were in this predicament, nor how long they'd been in it. She went to scratch her scabby head and the thought struck her she might just be able to use the wound to her advantage.

"Um, Spike. Not to get you worried, but this bump on my head, I think it took out some of my memory…recent memory."

His eyes shot open at that. "Say what?"

"I'm kind of, forgetting things, a little. Can you help me out?"

"What's the last thing you remember, love?"

She worked her lip. Had to take a wild guess here. "I think we all went to the high school to battle the First, right?"

Spike nodded. "Yeah, us and the mini-slayers…"

"And we went into the basement, opened the seal and crawled into the Hellmouth while Will mojo'd-up the girls and…the amulet? Was there an amulet?"

Spike sat up a little straighter. "Yeah, that trinket Angel brought. Fat lot of good it did."

"Uh…come again?"

Spike shrugged in disgust. "Didn't do a bleedin' thing, 'cept slow him down worrying over it. Poor old poof should have carried a crossbow instead like I warned him."

"_Angel _wore the amulet?"

"Yeah, Buffy, he…God, you don't remember?"

She looked at her scuffed pointy boot toes. "No, I don't."

"Aw, love. Angel's gone. Pile o' dust. Here…" Spike reached into his coat pocket and brought out the trinket in question. Buffy reached out and he passed it to her. Traces of silver ash fell on her palm from its intricate ornamental metalwork. Angel.

"Oh, my God…" she couldn't say more. It hurt more than it should after all these years. Her real years. Angel wasn't her lover, not even the idea of one anymore, yet he'd always been a constant, a steady point of being she could count on existing, knowing, remembering her, her youth and her struggle, no matter how long she lived. Where Spike had vanished into thin air, the permanent metaphorical stake that was Angel had held her firmly earthbound. And now he was gone, too. Here, in this world.

"Sorry," Spike said and reached out to take her hand. She accepted it and squeezed back, holding on. _Spike is here. Spike is here_. _But the world is all wrong and everyone in it is…_

She caught his eyes. "Tell me everything, Spike, from the battle onward. I need to know. Everything. Who's here; who's gone. I have to _know_!"

He reached for her and brought her hard to his side, holding her as she shook.

She followed Spike west, passing what must have been the end of town as grass and trees took the place of shattered glass and buckled steel. They followed the highway, roughly. Most of it was gone, split apart into asphalt chunks or thrown upside down in the blast made when Hell opened its mouth three days ago to begin devouring the earth. They followed the highway at her insistence, hoping against hope that her friends had fled this way and were halfway to Cuba or someplace slightly less hellish than the local environs. Spike had told her everything, his chin moving against the top of her head as he held her close in the remains of the laundromat, delivering the script of the greatest failure of her slayer career. Of any slayer's career. She'd been right about this world, someone did get fucked and her name was humanity. All for choosing the wrong vampire for her champion.

That was the thought that plagued her now as she marched long behind the black silhouette of Spike's coat and axe. That Hell had arrived on earth, that countless thousands had been blown or burned to ash, falling from the sky and into her lungs with each hard breath - most of the girls, Anya, Giles, Robin - all gone in the first wave at the high school - (It was still unknown if the others had found the bus and driven away in time.) these were just givens. These hard facts were the solution to an equation she'd set in motion by placing the amulet into the hand of her first vampire lover instead of her second. The gesture had failed. The jewel wouldn't light for Angel. Of course it didn't. Wrong fuel, wrong fire. Angel's soul was his curse. Spike's soul was his by virtue of his will. Armageddons weren't won on tainted soil nor was victory handed to false heroes, however well-meaning. She'd made the wrong choice. That was done. What was killing her now was _why_.

An hour passed in red-black trudging silence until Spike stopped and turned his head to sniff the air.

"What is it? Vampire?" They'd left the ash-zone and the air had cleared enough for her to remove her mask. It was darker, less hell-light refracting through the clouds to see by.

"No, it's human." He turned his head and sniffed again. "Female. I can smell her blood."

Buffy sighed. "Great, another bleeder. Fantastic help we girls are."

"No, she's hurt. And…" Another sniff. "She's a slayer. Come on!"

She followed Spike across the broken clumps of an open field. The upturned end of an overpass loomed ahead, cracked in half and sunk into a now-dammed stream bed, filling with trapped run-off from the big bang. As they drew close, Buffy caught sight of a quick black figure moving across the ruin and dropping down below it and out of sight.

"Hey!" Spike yelled and ran to follow the fleeting shape. A crossbow bolt whizzed past his head. "Dammit! It's us, you crazy bint! Some of the good guys!"

"Spike!" the figure shouted, her voice cracking in the gloom. "Holy shit!"

"Faith…" Spike said and dropped his axe, rooted to the spot as Faith ran toward them at break-neck speed despite a limp in her right leg. She hurdled the last of the field clumps and leapt straight up into Spike's arms, wrapping her limbs around him and securing his mouth in a lip-lock…that lasted way too long for Buffy's comfort.

Faith broke the kiss for a sec to toss aside her thick hair and address her fellow slayer. "Hey, B, what's up? You been keepin' my baby-boy safe?"

_Baby? _Faith held Spike's face protectively in her hands. Her eyes were bright with happiness.

"Fuckin' look at you, handsome! I'd thought you'd gone to dust in that big quake. Thought everyone had. But, damn! Here you are, thank Jesus and the rest!"

Whoa, reality check time. It seemed there were a few details Spike had left off the laundromat play-by-play recap. Spike kissed Faith on the cheek and she bounced to the ground, grabbing his hand. He allowed this, too, though his expression was unreadable in the near-darkness. "Come on, we need to get under cover," she said, tugging at him, walking backwards as they moved forwards. "Came out here to collect water, but the vamps keep passing through this area in case folks wander up the road. Easy pickin's."

Buffy kept her astonishment to herself as Faith led her apparently more-ex-than-usual boyfriend to the water's edge where she had been collecting it in empty fuel cans. "You guys can help carry these for me. My leg's hurtin' like a bitch," she said, indicating the source of her limp. A recently scarred wound ran down most of Faith's right leg just below the point where her jeans had ratted off at the thigh. The injury still oozed slightly from one end. "Cut a lot of stuff up in there - tendons, I think. Still not working right. But I can walk, so who's complaining. Here, B, take this can. I'll carry your blankie."

Buffy handed over her motel spoils and shouldered the converted water can. "Hot damn! Ho-Hos! B, you're an angel!"

Faith finished off most of the Hostess Treats and Mug Root Beer as they walked while Spike filled her in on their share of the post-apocalyptic fun. He recounted what he'd told Buffy earlier about how the both of them had held the line at the Hellmouth for as long as possible for Faith and the remaining girls and Scoobies to make a break for it. Then they had made their own hasty retreat through the sewers and out at the edge of UC Sunnydale where a vanguard of the First's finest had surrounded them in a skull-crunching battle broken only when the earth went "boom" and slayer and good-guy vampire were blown miraculously out of harm's way and into a waiting swimming pool. The rest of the ubersquad had scattered in the confusion, so they'd just walked out from there on foot, staying downwind and under cloud. Problem was, vamps and other nasties kept coming up out of the big red pit o' flame - a dragon, for one, which Buffy hoped had flown off south for the winter, and some troll-like things with big heavy clubs. They had apparently hidden from them under a felled bridge before calling it a day at the last motel standing.

Faith had seen none of these fantasy hellbeasts on her travels, but it seemed the blast had given them some trouble with the bus.

"What kind of trouble?" Buffy asked as fear seized her. She'd assumed if Faith was here, the rest were too, somewhere. "Is everyone okay? Is Dawn okay?"

"Buffy, I'm sorry." Faith said as she came to the head of a chunk of up-turned asphalt that was once the highway. She cocked her head to look below. Buffy ran up next to her and Spike caught her arm as she peered down. The school bus lay on its side. Part of it was crushed by rubble, and the rest was slit down the side from head to stern.

"What…? Don't tell me. Faith don't _tell_ me my sister's dead!"

Faith looked sick and glanced up at Spike who tightened his grip on her arm. "I'm sorry, B. When I woke up, they were all gone. Guess I survived on account of the fact I'm a slayer. I dunno. Kinda wish I'd died, too. Then I wouldn't have had to bury them all."

Little white strings tied to mile stakes Faith had plucked from the roadside marked the hasty memorials of her remaining friends. Vampire and slayer stood to either side of her as Buffy counted them, one to seven.

"Which one is Dawn's again?" she asked.

Faith cleared her throat. "Uh, that one, second from the left. I put her next to Xander. I thought you'd like someone looking after her."

Buffy nodded. They stood in another weed-choked rumpled field. Faith had chosen it because it was hidden from the road and the soil was loose.

"Thank you, Faith. You did this for them and you hardly knew some of them."

"They were brave fighters, Buff. Figured they deserved some kind of burial, after all."

Buffy felt numb. Not sad, or even grieving, exactly. Just numb. After all, there were worlds in which Dawn didn't even exist. Just as there were worlds in which Spike was dust and she had twins with Riley. Her babies didn't live in this world. Did that mean they were dead? How could they be when they existed elsewhere? As hard as it was to see these waving ties, her mind was beginning to change, broaden with the knowledge that the end wasn't necessarily the end at all, just one narrow linear way of looking at things. After all, in this case, the memorial was only symbolic. Faith had found no bodies.

"I hate to call this short, B. But we need to get in before something hungry and pissed spots us."

Buffy nodded and turned to Spike. Tear streaks marked his face in the meager light. To him 'gone' meant dead. Sure it did. He wasn't alive.

Buffy asked Faith tell the story over again as they wandered back to the crash site. It was a safe place to hide, Faith explained, because there was no blood and the hill of rubble kept the shell hidden from the east while providing a lookout. There was no trace of what had happened to the other occupants when the blast shook the ground and threw the bus into a tumble. A screech of brakes and a bounce and slide was the last Faith remembered before waking in pain in a ditch with a ripped up leg and no one to help her crawl to safety.

"Dunno, B. I just thought they got taken away by vamps. I've seen them do it often enough with other people these last few days. They don't leave the bodies lying around. Not their style."

"I don't know," Spike said, turning his face to the wind. "Can't smell them. Been trying to for a while now. If they died here, they would have left a trace - blood, rot, piss, something. They're just gone."

Buffy wasn't certain which was worse. All she knew was that the army of good was down to a trio of tired, hungry warriors picking their way back across the broken freeway.

They were navigating a channel, defined by tossed asphalt and rock when all three of them froze simultaneously. "You ladies hear that?" Spike asked.

"No," Buffy said, "but I feel it. And it's coming fast."

"Vamps! Shit! Punch it, kids!" Faith shouted as four ubers in war costume, broadswords and spears leapt down on them from a hunk of roadbed. Fists to sharpened steel, Faith and Buffy took on the leading trio, leaving Spike and his axe to deal with the uber in the rear.

Demon wails of delight rent the dark sky as Buffy kicked and danced her way around the rotten lurching creatures. They weren't like other vampires - they were swifter, more cunning and hard as steel to stake. The space they were ambushed in was narrow and uneven - caught between a rock and…more rocks. A mean line of snarling fangs and blades blocked any escape. It was fight 'n' stake or die trying.

"Faith!" Buffy cried. "We've got to split them up! Come around me and try to draw one off!" In a flash of bare arm and brown tresses Faith dove and rolled across Buffy's line of sight. Buffy knocked the leader down with a running kick and wrenched his spear free. Wooden shaft, thank the ubergods. She broke it in half over her knee and plunged the point through the uber's chest in a two-handed thrust that nearly took her shoulders off. Dust curled, adding to the messy soup collecting in her lungs. She spat and whirled about, checking the scene. Spike was a blur of black coat and sparking axe-to-sword action. He seemed to be holding his own. Faith was less fortunate and had come up from her roll into a pair of fangy jaws.

"Faith! Hang on!" Buffy whirled her spear point-first and took a running javelin throw at the uber firmly latched onto Faith's arm. Buffy struck with all she was worth, but the point failed to hit heart and lodged firmly into the beast's iron ribs. A blow from behind knocked her from her feet and it wasn't long before the rank breath of primitive vampire met her nape. She scrambled to gain her feet under its clawed grip as a zing and cry of "Buffy!" rang through the air coupled with a head-plop and a comforting fall of dust. Spike's axe was embedded in the dirt at her side. Nice throw, but it left him unarmed. One uber was match enough for her, or even two of hers; she had to get Faith free before Spike became another puff of cloud blowing around.

Buffy flipped to her feet and took up the axe. Another zing later and the mosquito at Faith's arm had wasted its last meal. "You okay?" she asked as Faith got up, holding her wound.

"Think so. Dumbfuck missed the artery, but made cube steak out of my bicep. Shit, it hurts!" Her eyes widened at the axe in Buffy's hands. "Where's Spike? He can't take on these assholes unarmed!" Both slayers dashed to the spot where Spike's own encounter with his ancestry had ceased to make growling, snarling noises.

"Spike!" Buffy yelled into the dim. Nothing. Where'd he go? She bent and felt the ground where he'd last been fighting. Ash came up on her hand. There was a nice soft pile of it. Her heart beat painfully as she held her palm close to her face, trying to examine it in the paltry light.

"Oh, fuck," Faith said, running up. "They got him!"

Buffy shook her head and presented her hand. "No, it's black. Uber-ash is black. Spike's is silver." _Like Angel's._

Faith knelt to examine her own handful. "How the fuck can you tell, Buffy? Ash is ash!"

"It's not Spike's dust. Trust me on this."

Faith didn't waste time pondering this factoid as she reached up with her good arm to climb up the upturned roadside. "Spike! Where the hell are you? Maybe they carried him off, B!"

"_It_ carried him…there was only one more. Hang on…Faith! Down here!" Buffy yelled, running forward toward a dark crevasse they'd passed earlier. Spike had fallen into it head-first up to his legs. Buffy grabbed a boot and began to pull. Faith jumped down and helped her.

"He's stuck," Buffy said. "There's a boulder lodged just over there…"

"I see it," Faith said and leapt over the opening to kick the rock free. Spike popped out like a leather cork and Buffy fell over backwards with him. She scrambled to his moaning head. He was gamefaced and scraped, half knocked-out by the fall.

"Spike! Spike! Can you hear me?"

"What the bleedin'? I fell in a damn hole, didn't I? Bloody brilliant. Those blighters sure are a bitch to dust. Buffy! You all right?"

Buffy nodded and kept looking Spike over for wounds. Faith caught up to them, laying a concerned hand on his scraped forehead. "Damn, boy; you sure can take a beating. Thank God it's just your head. Us girls can do the thinking, but we need the rest of you for the fighting and running."

"Faith, I don't think Spike's going to be doing any running for a while."

Faith looked up. "Huh?"

Buffy lifted the black t-shirt to reveal the raw ends of a foot-long wound dividing Spike's belly in two.

Together, Buffy and Faith limped Spike back across the not-a-highway to the remains of the school bus. Buffy eased Spike into a sheltered corner of tumbled seat cushions while Faith rummaged around the debris for the emergency first aid kit.

"Dammit, I know that lil' red box is around here somewhere. Andrew was sniffing the Bactine when we…"

Buffy gave her a 'hurry' look.

"…never mind. I'll find it."

Buffy lifted Spike's blood-wet shirt. The gash that crossed his belly was deep, sliced by the blade of an ubersword. Vampires didn't bleed excessively, but it looked as if the swing had gone any deeper, Spike would be spilling his guts. He hissed as she put her fingers to it.

"Fuck, ow! Why do you always gotta poke it?"

"Why do you always gotta whine so much?"

"Just wrap me up and give me a decent sleep. I'll be fine. I've had worse nicks."

Buffy heard a hunk of metal being turned over in the stern. "Gotcha, ya bastard! Here it is, B. Nurse in a can."

Buffy took the kit from her. "Thanks. Can you get me my pillowcase? There's some extra towels in it that might come in handy for putting Spike back together. Cut it into strips if you can."

Faith nodded. "I'm on it. Are you sure you don't want me too…"

"I've got it, Faith. Thanks."

"Aye-aye," Faith said and crawled out of the bus hulk.

Buffy opened the kit and began to dab at Spike's wound with a gauze pad and a squirt of stingy disinfectant.

He growled and cursed at the ceiling (or windows, as the bus was on its side). Might as well add salt to the wounds. "So, you and Faith…?"

Spike stiffened and groaned.

"That good, huh?"

"Didn't want you to find out like this. I wanted a chance to explain."

Buffy poured another tablespoon of 'ouch' into the gauze and began cleaning the lower half of the gash. He grimaced, but took it like a half-man. "You don't owe me an explanation, Spike. Whatever you and Faith have been up to, it's none of my business."

Spike closed his eyes as she put down the gauze and began to tear off strips of medical tape. "Thought you knew, to be honest," he said, sounding more weary than his battle wounds warranted. "Or…" his eyes opened again. "Maybe you've forgotten - that bump."

Buffy sighed. "Like I said, doesn't really matter. It's not like you and I were…not for a long time, anyway. Besides, I can't pretend to be surprised. Faith fits your M.O. to a tee."

"Buffy, it wasn't like that," he said, trying to lean up. Buffy eased him down with a shake of her head. "You've got to know, I could never…"

"Hey, B! Will these do?" Faith re-entered, towel strips in offering. "Had to cut them against the edge of the axe. I cleaned it first…if he can even get infections. We're short on blades around here. Don't suppose any of us thought to grab an ubersword."

"We didn't, but thanks, Faith." Despite this odd assembly of events and consequences, Buffy felt a warming compassion for her former nemesis. For all their history, Faith was at least giving her a senior slayer's due respect - even when it came to who had whose hands on the vampire. "Come over here and hold the wound closed while I tape him up."

Buffy came out of the bus and attempted to brush the grime from her jeans as she climbed the rubble heap to join Faith at the lookout. Spike was resting fairly comfortably, but he was in no condition to fight or run. She knew that might prove difficult if more vamps moved in as the night wore on.

"All quiet on the, what is it? Eastern front?"

Faith blew her hair from her eyes. "Yeah, gnarly old suckers are chasing meals off someplace else. They travel in small groups. Might be a while before we see any more vamp action. Good thing, as ours is bleeding. How is he?"

Buffy shrugged as she sat down on a hunk of concrete. "He'll live. But he's hungry and the blood loss doesn't help that one bit. He needs to feed if he's going to heal."

Faith scanned the red horizon. "That's not likely to happen any time soon. Vamps can't feed off other vamps, can they?"

Buffy shook her head. "Not really. Empty calories, or something like that."

Faith looked glum. "I'd cut a vein open for him if it'd help. I offered once, but he said if the cut hurts me, it'll hurt him to even lick off it. So no go."

"Hurt him? How?" Buffy had been seriously considering the same option. She figured there was enough super-healing slayer blood between the two of them to keep Spike on his feet for a while at least. If he could be talked into it.

Faith looked puzzled. "Man, you really did get your brains scrambled. The demon-zapper version 2.0. He told me, you got his muzzle fixed last time you dropped into the Initiative."

This-world logic began to fall into place like a mudslide. No wonder she and Spike weren't close. In this reality, she'd had Riley's commandos fix the chip. Why? When given the choice in her own time, she hadn't hesitated. Curbing a souled Spike had never even occurred to her. She trusted the soul far more than any technology the 21st century could dish out. _Why didn't I trust him?_

Buffy sighed and pulled her hair back from her face. She'd give anything for a rubber band about now. "Faith, I don't expect you to understand what Spike and I have been through together these last few years, but it's not…simple. And I'm not sure if I have the energy right now to lay it all out for you."

Faith shrugged. "Don't sweat it, B. Xander told me a little about what went down between you two. You died and came back all fucked up so you fucked him and life was good until something about demon eggs and a spat in the bathroom brought it all crashing down. Whatever, I know it didn't end pretty. He won't talk about it. Not a peep."

"It wasn't a spat, Faith. Spike tried to rape me."

Faith stared at her for several long seconds, then looked away and scratched her nose. "Oh. That explains a few things."

"What things?" Her new-found compassion for Faith was slipping.

Faith set her chin on her scraped knees. "He won't fuck, for one. He'll go for a blow or a grope and a smooch or two, but nothing that, well, gets him on top, so to speak. Thought it was just some mind-fuck you'd played on him or something."

"Mind-fuck? Faith, you do remember what Spike is, don't you?"

Faith turned back to her. "Course I do. His big cold boner gives him dead away."

"And so you think that sleeping with him will change that?"

"Does when you got it in your mouth. Gets allll nice and toasty. What? Don't get all Mrs. Prissy with me, B. I know you threw down for him. And it wasn't no 'whoops, your chocolate bar's in my peanut butter' kind of throw down, either. From what I've heard it was a fuckin' rodeo."

"Faith…!" Buffy didn't know if she wanted to shout or cry. Tears sprung up all the same. She scrubbed them away._ Anya, Xander, Willow, Giles, Dawn - all dead or 'gone' and I'm crying over Faith doing my ex? And I thought Iowa was bad. God, this is one fucked-up world series. Welcome to this week's episode of 'This Is Your Hell,' with special guest, Buffy Summers!_

"Hey, Buff. Sorry. Didn't mean it to come out so hard. But you've got to know, this wasn't about you at all. I know the thing with Angel and Riley…that was the bad me. This was…hell, I just didn't see it coming. And then I was coming…and I thought, 'Oh, fuck, here I go again, making Buffy miserable.'"

Buffy swallowed down her tears and rubbed her aching forehead. "So go ahead, make my day even more morose. Explain to me how this happened. What, you were fucking him in my house? Under the same roof?"

"Uh, not so much on the fucking, like I said. Was more like a petting zoo. You know, you had him all chained up like a bad little tiger in that basement. All helpless-like with the ever-missing shirt and the bed head. Didn't have no one to light his cigs, so I helped him out, bumming a few myself until he started to hide the damn things...and maybe this is just a smoker thing, but I had to punish him some over that and we were wrestling, just goofing around and whoa! Is that a stake in your 501s or are you happy to see me? So I just…helped him out. You know, got more smokes that way."

"You _blew_ him for cigarettes?"

"It was a little sweeter than all that. But yeah, basically. Boy's got a monster in his pants. And I know what it's like to be cooped up. Gotta blow off a little steam now and again. Okay, maybe a lot of steam, and a lot of agains; but damn, I know I don't have to tell you that boy sure is pretty in the buff, Buff."

"Faith…I can't have this conversation with you. Ex or no ex, Spike is a vampire. A killer by nature. You don't want to listen? Fine. Jerk him off all you like, but keep one thing clear: He can still be dangerous. Especially if you play him like a…"

A flash lit up the sky, bright as a day it could have been if not for all the smoke.

"Demon lights are getting closer," Faith said, pointing to the horizon. "We've got to keep down and out of sight. Hell's on our heels and it's pissed as fuck. We need to get ready to move."

"I know, but Spike has to rest, Faith. At least until his wound knits. We all need to rest," she said, pointing to Faith's new arm bite. "Or what good are we going to be against more soldiers other than bleeding homing devices?"

"You think the ubers will come after vamp blood?" Faith asked with a nod toward the bus. "Cause I'm all healed up now. Dumped all my leg bandages in the river earlier. And the arm, 'Jaws' missed the tubes by a fang."

"They won't be coming after you or Spike. They haven't been. The ones we met on the road…they were coming after me."

"What? Why? You're not even scratched."

Buffy sighed. "You might say I'm on the rag, literally."

Faith's mouth opened in realization. "No wonder they jumped us so fast in that ravine. I just thought they got lucky. Man, sucks to be you right now, doesn't it?"

"You could say that," Buffy said. Not like there was a handy-dandy washcloth evaporation system handy. She'd been rolling them up and stuffing them down sewer drains, hoping that would keep the vamps off their trail. Pretty soon she'd need to make a trip to that river.

Faith smacked her forehead. "Duh!"

Buffy blinked. "Huh?"

Faith reached out and applied a matching smack to Buffy's forehead.

"Hey! What was that for?"

"For being such a nit-wit, B. Spike's got a sucking gut wound and you've got his cure on tap."

"I what?" Buffy blanched. "Oh…"

"Eureka, already! Go feed the starving vampire so we can get the fuck outta here."

"Faith, I don't think…"

"Oh, don't even start. World's all gone to pig shit and you're gonna sit here with your legs crossed and come over all innocent? Don't tell me you never gave up a free meal before."

"I never…"

"Are you shitting me? You _never_…not even a little?"

"It…didn't come up."

"Jesus, have you ever been missing the main event."

Buffy made a yuck-face. "You and Spike?"

Faith did her best to look non-committal.

"You and _Angel_!"

"Look, this isn't about who did what with which vampire. Cause we're both gonna lose. Spike can't bite but he can go down. _God_, can he go down. So come on, what are you waiting for - fun all around. I'll keep lookout."

"You're just gonna sit here while…I…we…"

"Well, I could watch, but something tells me you're a little shy in that area."

Buffy threw up her hands (and nearly her Zingers, too). "I'm…going to go talk to him. See what I can - what we can all do about this…situation."

Faith shrugged. "Suit yourself. But if it was me, I'd…"

"I know! Please. I get it. Time for sharing is over. I mean, don't you even care? Do you just make it a habit of throwing your boyfriends at other girls?"

Faith's amusement faded. "No, seems like by the time I get 'em, they're already in love with you."

It was dark in the bus. The clouds had shifted, taking away most of the light, leaving them in a cast of deep-red outline and shadow. She climbed over the bus debris to find Spike where she'd left him on the cushions: eyes shut, chest still. Usually lack of breath meant he was sleeping, but she knew he was also trying to keep the wound still.

"Spike?"

He opened his eyes. "Yeah?"

"I didn't want to disturb you."

"It's okay. Can't sleep anyhow."

"Are you in pain?"

He tried a small shift and winced. "A little."

"A lot, I think you mean."

"Fine, a lot, then."

"Look, I need to ask you something. We can't stay here much longer. We need to keep moving. Faith says those ubers travel in packs and - "

"Go."

"Huh?"

Spike's eyes were dark and narrow. "I want you and Faith to go. I'm nothing but a bloody liability - useless dead flesh against these uberbastards. They can have me. But you and Faith, you can fight 'em. You've got a chance, Buffy. You're both stronger than me."

"Spike, that's crazy. We're not going anywhere without you. That's not even an option. As soon as you can move we're going to…"

"Going to what? Make a blind dash for Westend Hell till sun-up and then it's 'dive under a sodding rock' till nightfall? Daylight's your only advantage, Buffy. Buggered or sound, I'm no good for it. Vampire, remember?"

"Ally, remember? I'm not leaving anyone behind. Least of all, _you_." Her words were firm but her emotion leaked on 'you.'

Spike's occasional breath stopped. Buffy wished she could read his face as clearly as he could hers in the darkness.

"I know things haven't been the best between us since…we broke up. But I meant it when I said I wasn't ready for you not to be here." _And here's to hoping this-world Buffy managed to say it out loud. _"You've brought us this far. We've brought each other this far and I won't give up. Not as long as there's still life in us, in our blood."

"Please don't say blood," he said tightly. "It isn't just the threat of daylight holding me back."

"I know, which is why I came back in here. I want you to feed and I know you can't bite Faith. So I…thought maybe…" She pulled back the tattered ends of her sleeve, holding her wrist out to him.

Spike moaned and recoiled as much as his wound would allow. In the hard shadow he turned his face away too late for her to miss the change. "Get out," he said, voice thickened by the prominence of his teeth. "Please."

"Spike, look at me."

He turned his yellow eyes on her as if she'd been blind to the obvious. "Christ, Buffy! You think I can't smell it? Another day of this and ubers won't be the only vampires you'll need a stake ready for."

"You won't hurt me. I trust you," Buffy said, crossing her arms and lifting her blouse up over her head to expose her skin. She shifted to ease down beside him. Spike's breath was coming out in shallow pants as his demon eyes flickered over her, fearful and hungry. She brushed her hair away from her neck. "Do it."

Spike made a pitiable sound and cringed in new pain. Yellow eyes blinked with shock and sudden rage. He growled and grasped his head.

"Oh, shit! The chip!" Buffy sat up and shifted away from his writhing form. "Oh, God, Spike. I'm so sorry. I didn't realize. I didn't remember!" _New chip, new rules. Could it have killed you to ask?_

"Bloody amnesia, I get it now," he said, with a hissing sob as the pain receded. "Thought that was too sadistic, even for you."

"They programmed the new chip so you couldn't hurt me anymore."

"Toss the lady a dolly; she's got the answer. Can't harm a hair on your head, love. Not for the world and a hand basket to carry it in. They saw to it."

Buffy felt the tears she'd managed to choke down for Faith come up and spill over her cheeks. She didn't think she could take another minute of this. Spike's pain. Her pain. Life was a terrible cruel thing - most of her lives, it would seem. Not the batting average she'd been hoping for when she first met him not so many hours ago on a moonlit beach. She reached out to touch his hand where it remained clamped to his head. When he didn't flinch she let her fingers sink into his hair, stroking him, hushing him. She touched his face when he calmed. Human again.

"Spike, listen. There's another way."

Buffy lay naked beside him, save for her bra which she'd elected to keep on for what shred of modesty might need to remain between them. It signified some frail claim that this was not what it could have been - a gift between lovers - but rather a last-ditch attempt at surviving another day in an earth-bound Hades.

She lay on the cushions above him, his cheek resting against her inner thigh. Her free leg draped over his shoulder. He couldn't spare much movement for the pain, so she'd made the moves for him, shifting and adjusting, asking, "Is this okay? Does that hurt? Can I move here? How does that feel?"

His answers were soft and she had to strain to hear them. "It's good, Buffy; you're good." His licks were shy at first, soft introductions to her folds. He cleaned her thigh to thigh, ever working toward her center in slow deliberation. His tongue combed her fur, softening the tangled clots and lipping them free. In any other circumstance the knowledge of what he was doing would have made her wig, but here in the fragile sanctuary of a crumpled bus, the grooming was oddly sweet and soothing. He'd tried to keep his demon down, but when she revealed herself and the full of her scent, she knew it would only torture him further. _Let it go. Let it be. I trust you. Please. Be comforted._

His tongue was at her lips now, slipping between, gathering and drinking. The blood was fresh here and fed by the unavoidable stirring of her arousal. There was no hiding it - he could smell it, taste it, each lick to lick. But somehow they both knew it would be wrong to acknowledge it so he kept his movements low, away from the blood-roused pulse at her clit.

He fed steadily, his lips latched to her source, sucking slow and even, breath stilled, the wet workings of his mouth and throat the only sounds they made as the wind blew on outside. She hoped to God Faith was still on point, because she wanted nothing in the world to interrupt this. His hand came up, idly stroking her hip like a nursing babe, rapt with a primitive need to reward the one who fed him. That's when she heard it, what she had at first mistaken for a trembling of pain and hunger from Spike's chest evolve into a deep rhythmic purr he seemed as equally unable to subdue as his gameface.

Buffy's fingers twined into his hair and she squeezed him between her thighs as he gained more movement, healing as he ate, plumbing her with his strong tongue for more and more. All the while that beautiful sound rumbled through him. His animal pleasure was so raw and real. She'd never heard it before. All those times they'd made love years ago it had always been to his human face. Faith was right, she had been missing the main event.

"Oh, God, Spike. Don't stop..." A shuddering that began in her lower spine grew suddenly and shook the pleasure right down into her depths where demon and slayer met, thundering her into orgasm. She cried out and crushed herself to his face, her clit pulsing and throbbing, gliding slippery over the demon ridges of his nose. He growled and sucked hard at her core, draining her as the blood rush gradually eased and faded into bliss.

Buffy lay sweating, her thighs damp and parted. They were still now. Spike was purring softly with his face against her leg, his hand on her lower back. His demon eyes were shut, lost in the sweet rush as her blood drifted from his belly into his veins. It couldn't have been much of a meal all told, but if legend served, slayer blood was the very elixir of the dead.

She touched his hair. "How do you feel?"

Spike stirred. His face shifted and the delicious sounds ended as he looked up at her with blue eyes. "Better," he said, letting her go to sit up. Together they tested the ends of his bandages. The cloth was loose and no longer stuck to his weeping skin. Spike took the taped end in his hand and ripped it back. A red new scar was all there was to show for the slice that had nearly bisected him not 15 minutes ago.

"You're healed," she said, reaching to touch the marvel for herself. She traced the length of the scar from rib to waistband, her fingers trailing off to brush over the hard outline of his groin. He gasped and their eyes met. "Spike, let me…" she said, moving to undo his fly. She wanted to taste that hardness so badly her mouth watered.

A look of panic crossed his face. He drew back from her, reaching for a shirt to cover himself.

"Spike it's okay. The blood, I know what it does."

He slid away from her. Shaking his head. His eyes darted around the bus like a trapped animal.

Buffy's gut ached as she backed off and reached for her blouse. _Whatever happened to us that he'd be so ashamed?_ "I'll get Faith," she said sadly and dressed.

Buffy sat up at the lookout trying to keep warm. She'd exited the bus so quickly she'd forgotten to grab her jacket. Short-sleeved linen did little to stave off the growing wind. She shivered and wrapped herself in her arms. Her sex was the only heated part of her body. It refused to come down off its little supper experience. Talk about stirring the pot, the feeding had only made her crampier and bloodier. Unless Spike stayed latched to her 24/7 (and, God, didn't that thought have its appeal) vamps would be sniffing her on the winds for sure. It would be best to duck down, she supposed, and climbed into the lee of the fallen highway.

It was quieter down here; she could hear the twisted steel ribs of the bus moaning in the occasional downward gusts. Why was she keeping watch anyway? Her slayer tingles would indicate an ambush faster than her sight in the dark. Her body was so tired. It needed to rest, to get warm. Buffy started back for the shelter of the bus where Faith had crawled in to calm Spike half an hour ago.

Strangely, the moaning of the wind only got worse as she got closer to the belly of the ditch. Then she froze. The moans were coming from the bus. Quiet and muffled - it seemed the 'petting zoo' was still open for business. Her curiosity piqued as her heart grieved. She moved slowly, knowing all too well that the smallest sound would bring the slayer/vampire games to an abrupt halt.

Buffy could hear Faith's half-whispers as she neared the blown-out rear window. "Come on, sweet boy; just relax and take it slow. I'm not giving up; we're gonna take all the time we need…you know I'll make it good…" She could see Spike's head lolling against the back of a righted bus bench. Faith was on her knees in front of him, her brown head bobbed up and down rhythmically to his slow easy thrusts. She couldn't see his lap, but his jeans were a dark pool around his ankles and Faith's panties were dangling from his discarded belt buckle. Wet sucking sounds could be heard, along with the creaking rock of the unbolted seat and Faith's full-mouthed moans as she serviced the very organ Buffy had offered herself up to fill.

Although she couldn't see it, Buffy could imagine Faith's delight well - to have him between her lips, hard and surging for the back of her throat. It hadn't taken her long, years ago, to learn how to relax her jaw and reflexes to make a mighty masterpiece out of it. She wondered if he could tell the difference. Slayer to slayer, maybe one warm mouth was as good as another. No doubt Faith had more than a few tricks up her sleeve. Buffy oozed with warm blood when she noticed Faith's free hand was moving down out of sight between her legs. _Not gonna think about _that_ now, are we?_

The brown head came up. A look of determination lit up her dark eyes. "Okay, boy, listen. You've got a fuckin' torpedo here all locked and loaded to go. And it don't seem to be gunning for my mouth. Time for holdin' hands and talking pretty is over," she said, climbing up onto the seat, straddling his lap. "We're gonna fuck, now. And you're gonna like it, love it, want it so bad you're gonna forget this fucking shit-hole world and everyone still in it, yeah?"

If Spike spoke Buffy didn't hear it. He didn't make a sound, but his whole body stiffened when Faith moved to impale herself on him in one slow descent. "That's it…easy, baby-boy; don't fight it. You're so hard. My pussy's gonna love it. No worries, now. Don't have to touch me at all. Just like back home in the basement; sit back, close your eyes, and let Faith drive."

Faith drove all right, right down on him at a dead gallop like someone had thrown the gates at the Kentucky Derby. And they're off! "That's my good boy, my sweet, sweet boy. Now we're cookin'…that's it, fuck me, fuck me, deeper, harder… _fuck,_ that's so good…" She rode him freely like the slayer-bitch-whipped vampire he was. Chipped and souled, he was a bad, bad kitty all chained up, all but for that deep demon fire caged tight beneath the surface. Buffy knew that was the Spike that Faith was trying to reach - to thrust him open a crack and have herself a peek into that raw flame she saw in his eyes whenever he gave Buffy an unguarded glance. But Spike wasn't sharing as he gripped the seat with outstretched arms and surrendered to her pulsing, pile-driving flesh - his naked ass squeaking on the vinyl seat. One slayer twat or other, what did it matter? Faith couldn't make it all better, lick his wounds. No one could. It was much too late for that. So what if he got one off now and again? It was like spitting in the wind - aimless and dumb. Buffy wasn't excited anymore by this peep show. She just felt sad for him, for all of them.

She turned away from the window, from the sight of Faith with her hair thrown back and her eyes screwed shut - coming and swearing and fucking the shit out of a dead man's cock. Deader than it once was. Her seconds. That's all Faith ever got - the battered remains of her discarded lovers.

When the creaking died down and Faith's last raspy gaps subsided, Buffy made her noisy presence known.

"Oh, hey! B! Hang on, just changing in here."

_Changing into what? Does she think I'm stupid?_

"I'm cold Faith; I want to come inside!"

After a rattling stumbling chorus of hurried noises, Faith came to the upper end of the bus that served as a front door.

"'kay," she said, buttoning her shirt and opening a loose side-flap of metal. "Just keep it down. I finally got our boy to sleep."

"I bet," Buffy said, passing her by to take in Spike asleep with Andrew's abandoned windbreaker pulled up over his shoulders. She went to him and touched his cool cheek with the back of her hand. He murmured something in his uneasy sleep. "Go keep watch, Faith. I'll keep an eye on our 'boy.'"

Faith stayed a moment at the door, eyeing them both before going out. "Sure, B. Whatever you say. But we can't stay much longer."

"I know," Buffy said as she sat down slowly next to him, lifting his head from the sex-warmed bench to pillow against her thigh. Her fingers threaded through his tousled hair and she felt him relax muscle by muscle as the bad dreams faded; replaced, she hoped, by better memories. "It's okay, Spike," she whispered. "I think I'm beginning to understand."

Buffy had just fallen asleep, chin to her chest, when she woke with a start. A small green light was flickering a few inches from her nose. A flash later that flicker turned into Willow.

"Will!"

"Buffy! Hey! Sorry to wake ya. You didn't look too comfortable anyway. Oh, except for Spike, of course. How cute."

Buffy glanced at Spike still snoozing against her thigh. Green glowy Willow was floating a few inches off the ground. "Will, are you okay?"

"Me? Oh yeah, a little woozy still from the slam-bam make-slayers-of-the-ma'ams thing, but getting better. Less with the thud. More with the wakey. It's why I'm late picking you up. Locator spells kept going all blooey. You guys seen Faith?"

"Faith? Yes! Will, she's just outside, isn't she?"

Willow shut her glowing green eyes and hummed for a sec. She opened them. "Yep, she's out like a light, too. Up in the rocks. You guys need to work on your rest break rotation."

"Dawn! Oh, God, Willow. Is she with you?"

"Yeah…Dawnie, Xander, Kennedy, Andrew…they're all in a cabin together in Arcata. Or at least we think that's where I zapped everybody to when the bus went wonky." Willow paused to look around. "Gee, it's a mess. Ooh, there's Andrew's Red Dwarf jacket. He'll want that."

"You zapped everyone half-way up California?"

"Yeah, neat, huh? I wanted someplace safe, so I thought of trees and whoosh! Redwoods! I feel bad, though. I forgot to zap Faith. She must have been sitting behind me. I only had half a sec to make with the transport spell, and I just made it good for all the heads I could see. Think she'll be pissed?"

"I think she'll forgive you once the limp heals up."

"It's good you found the bus, Buffy. I green-fairied over here on the traces of my transport spell. The bus is still humming with it. So, you packed for the Pacific Northwest?" Willow asked, raising her green arms.

"Wait! Will, Spike and I can't leave yet."

Willow looked confused. "Why?"

"Because…something went wrong at the Hellmouth. Something that wasn't supposed to happen."

"Yeah, it went wrong all right, the earth cracked in half right under our feet. It's a big ol' mess now. You can't stop it alone, Buffy. Not even I can stop it…at least, I don't think so."

"I can't explain quickly enough in a way that will make sense, Will. But trust me when I say Spike is the key to repairing the busted hell zipper. I just need to get him close enough. Can you take us there?"

"Yeah, I guess, but I can't help out much - too green for this latitude," Willow said, passing a hand through the bus seat. "I'm anchored to Kennedy's spirit. I can't do much more than find people and move them around. Oh, and create force fields and make cows walk upright for some slightly disturbing reason…"

"Transport's all we need, Will. Go get Faith and zap her up to Arcata. I need to talk to Spike for a sec."

"Yo-kay. Back in a flash."

Willow green-spirited herself out of the bus and Buffy moved to shake Spike awake.

"Spike, wake up."

"Hmm?" He raised his head, a bit embarrassed to find it had been in Buffy's lap. "What's happening?"

"It's Willow. She here, more or less. She's come to gather us up and take us to the others."

Spike sat up, reorienting himself. "The others?"

"They're safe. All of them. You were right, Spike. They didn't die. She got them out before the bus crashed. She'll get us out too, but there's something you and I still need to do to fix this world."

Spike squinted at her. "Are you daft? Place is a shambles. Sunnydale's gone, Buffy. There's nothing left to do 'cept bugger out. Or did Willow come over all deus ex machina?"

"No, Spike. You did. Or you will. You're the answer to this, the one who can unscramble the mess Buffy made…I mean _I_ made with this final battle."

"Don't follow you. This place is done with me, unless I fall arse over tit into another hole and dust."

Buffy took his hand. "Stop saying that. You're worth a hell of a lot more than dust."

He paused, looking at their joined fingers. "Buffy…I don't deserve…"

"Bullshit. You've earned every right to be here with us, fighting, to the very end of the world. I should have known better. I should have chosen you, but somehow…"

"Buffy…what are you saying, love?"

Memories shuffled and fit together in Buffy's mind. Scenes from her past, gone long ago for her now. Somehow the path to victory had been altered. She didn't want to look back, not that far, not to that night. The tentativeness Spike had now in his touch, the withdrawal, the shame, the chip, the chains, Faith…

"Spike, before we go, there's just one more thing I need to ask you."

He nodded, ever helpful. "Yeah, sure. What is it?"

She met his eyes. "Did you rape me?"

He froze, something very simple for a vampire to do. To stop.

"You heard me, Spike. I need to know."

His eyes moved first, searching for a focus. "I don't…Buffy…you don't remember?"

"I remember you throwing me to the floor. What I'm fuzzy on is exactly how far it went after that."

Spike looked like he wished the ground would open up again and swallow him whole. "Christ, Buffy, does it matter?"

"Of course it matters! Something made me not trust you. Even though you had a soul. Angel never should have worn that amulet. It was made for you, designed for you, for _your_ soul, not his. But because I somehow get stuck in the middle of everything the decision fell on me and I made the wrong choice and that mistake has cost me Sunnydale and possibly the rest of the world, so I need you to grow a pair and own-up. Tell me, did you rape me or not?"

"I did."

Buffy sighed and squeezed his hand. She'd found the lynch pin - the point at which this world had unraveled from her own. Somehow her heart had found the courage to forgive intent but not action. Here lay the path to the end of mankind - a soulless vampire's love-madness and a slayer's weakness for things undead. What a glorious fucked-up mess.

"Buffy…I'm so…"

"Spike, please don't say you're sorry."

He came off the seat to face her. "But I am. Buffy, you don't know how much. It weighs on me…heavier than all my crimes together because I hurt…the one good…"

She raised her eyes to his. They were swirling with pain, regret, love. Story of their lives. He dropped to his knees.

"I'd give anything to live that day over. _Anything_."

Oh, the irony was thick here.

"You have Spike. There are other worlds, other chances. Maybe we can't always see them, but time is forever splitting apart into new realities from each step we take, each thought, each desire, each missed opportunity. There is a world in which Xander arrives before you leave your coat on the stairs; there's a world in which you go back to the crypt and just cry it all out; there's a world in which I don't let suvolte eggs and ex-boyfriends make me ashamed of you; there's a world in which I kick your ass into the towel rack and slowly learn to forgive you, even love you. But those are other worlds and this is now. We have to make do with what we have, and what we have, by whatever means right now, is your soul."

"I don't follow..."

Buffy reached into her back pocket and pulled out the amulet.

"This was made for you. The Powers, or Partners or whoever, I don't know anymore, made this to channel the purity of your soul. Angel was brave, and Angel was good, but he wasn't good enough to wear this. You are my second, my champion, not him. And if I could live a day over, it would be that night before the end. I wish I could give you that night now - to hand this to you and touch your face and lie down next to you unchained for once to sleep. But my time is short, about to end. And all I can tell you now is that I believe in you. So give me your hand and let's get this party started."

Hell On Earth they would have called it if one could tell the earth from the various Hell parts wreaking havoc on it. The scorched ground under their feet trembled as Buffy and Spike stood on a hill of steaming rock, overlooking the angry mouth of the underworld. Bright flashes tore up from the bottomless pit. Nameless creatures with scales and bat wings flew out on the vermilion waves, screeching and diving through the smoke and flame.

It burned her eyes to look at it, so she kept them on Spike.

"It's time," she said over the din. A green Willow-powered shield surrounded them like a membrane, keeping off the worst of the heat and flying debris.

Spike opened his hand and the long chain of the amulet poured from his palm. He caught it and looped it around his neck. Almost at once it began to glow. He staggered a moment and refound his footing.

"Bloody hell, that stings."

"So you've told me."

"Keep back, Buffy. I don't know what this bauble's got planned but it feels pretty damned enormous."

Spike kept his eyes on the amulet while the green protective shell overhead warped and Buffy worried it might collapse too soon. Will had created the shield to hold until Buffy gave the word. As memory served, it had taken the amulet a few minutes to rev up on Spike's soul. Jesus, he was going to burn up, all over again. What was she thinking?

"Spike! Are you sure you want to do this?"

He looked indignant despite the growing pain. "Course I do. Time I earned my keep around here. Don't go trying to talk me out of it now, Slayer. A deal's a deal. I'm the last demon standing with a soul, don't forget. I'm all we've got. Ow! Bloody…"

Buffy shielded her eyes from the glare as Spike began to light up like a Roman candle.

In the bright confusion, Buffy felt more than saw Willow reappear in floating form to her left along with an unexpected guest.

"B! What the fuck? What are you doing to him?" Faith rushed up to Buffy, grabbing her arm. Faith's nails dug into her skin as she squinted into the Spike-light. Faith reached out to touch him.

"Faith! No! It'll burn you up. Spike has to do this. Trust me. Will! I told you to send her into the woods!"

"Sorry, Buff. Faith wouldn't go. She begged me to take her ringside instead."

Faith was in Buffy's face. "Was that your plan? To zap me off so you could offer up my boyfriend to Hell like easy-light charcoal?"

"Faith, Spike has a destiny. The amulet will close the Hellmouth and destroy the scourge on earth if you just give it - _him_, a chance!"

Spike, more or less oblivious to their exchange, cried out and the green shell broke apart in a rain of green sparks. His chest burst forth with a white piercing light fanning out in all directions. In the distance the answering cry of beasts in pain rose up and were silenced as they were annihilated by the penetrating force. The magic was brilliant; _he_ was brilliant. Tears sprung to Buffy's eyes. _I missed this before_. _This is what it looks like. His soul…_until it faltered and Spike groaned, dimming and falling to his knees.

"Spike!"

The Hellmouth roiled in answer. Buffy's whole vista went wobbly.

"Yipes!" Willow squeaked. "The dimensional fabric of this world is unraveling! It's unstable. Whatever Spike's doing it's not enough…I'm losing touch with …"

Her magical greenness flickered and faded, replaced by Faith's growing wrath. "You had no right!" she yelled over the din. "How long are you going to make him pay? Whatever he did to you, there's no making up for it, is there? Is this what you wanted, B? His death?"

Buffy stood, shocked and shaken. She looked to Spike withering in the heat - spurting with inconsistent light as his soul fought to regain the upper hand. Why wasn't it working? Her heart screamed for her to go to him, to rescue him from this. But wait, bigger holes needed bigger fuel, right? That's what the amulet wanted. _Someone with a soul, yet more than human_…a rare vampire or else a slayer could bear it. But Angel had forbidden her to try.They hadn't known the price. But this was different now and she wasn't about to stand around waiting for Hell to ring Spike's number up.

"Buffy!"

Ignoring Faith's cry, Buffy got down on her hands and knees and crawled to him, feeling with her hands, eyes slitted against the brilliance. She reached him and wrapped her arms around her ill-fated lover and dragged him to his feet. Buffy gasped as Spike's eyes opened and met hers, piercing blue. Yellow flames leapt up from Buffy's stomach, chest and arms, every place where slayer and vampire met. She knew this fire, had held it briefly in her hand, felt its pull, the burning. They'd always been flint and stone, sending up sparks - if only the kindling would light.

"No!"

Buffy hit the ground, hard. She shook out the stars and scrambled around to see her attacker framed in the starburst. She started to get up, but Faith knocked her back down with a full-slayer-force kick to the side, cracking ribs.

"Faith! Are you insane?"

"No, B. Just tired of you always hogging the dance floor. Sorry about the smackdown but I figure the only way we ever really communicate is with our fists."

"But, Spike needs…"

"I know what he needs! I knew the second I saw him tied up next to your motor oil and fabric softener! He's done with you. Deep in his guts, he's done. Ruined by you. And I should know, Buffy. Talkin' to the expert here. So if somebody's gotta take the fall with him it sure as shit better be somebody from the same floor or this cosmic clean-up's gonna short right the fuck out!"

"I…"

"Beat it, B. You've done yours. Got the tombstone trophy to prove it. Let the cellar dwellers pick up the tab tonight."

With effort Buffy got to her feet, holding out a hand to keep Faith at bay. Her fellow slayer was rampant with conviction, glowing with a self-pride that lit up nearly as bright as Spike's sputtering soul.

"Faith…I can't just walk away from this. I know why you want to try but it's not your place. Not your destiny."

"Buffy, listen to her," Spike said, straining. "Girl's got a point. You've had yours. I couldn't bear it. Not again. Leave off, love. For Dawn's sake if nothing else."

"Spike…I…" _What can you possibly say to him now? That you love him? You do, God knows how much, but not here. Not in this time. And back when it was true, he didn't even believe you._

"Goodbye, Buffy. Kiss her for me."

"Spike…!"

Buffy stood frozen in the molten heat as he opened his arms to welcome Faith. She smiled as she went to him and wrapped her arms around him, holding tight. The flash threw Buffy back as Faith's soul caught and lit, doubling the amulet's power. Between them there were no flames, only pure white light.

The Hellmouth trembled. The ground cracked and the rocks shook as the defiled earth began to collapse in on itself to seal the gash. Whatever demon fire Faith had hoped to draw from Spike - she was receiving it now, loud and clear, melting her apart. The ground began to give and Buffy was forced back, scrambling up the rock as it began to crumble into the abyss. The chunk of stone that held up the joined pair remained steady as their light grew and cut through the darkness, making day.

"Buffy! Now! I have to get you out of here!"

Buffy got to her feet, holding her arms out for balance. "What? Will? Where?"

Willow had rematerialized, floating above the shifting boulders. "Take my hand, I've got to get you out of here before this all goes boom!"

Buffy glanced back. The beautiful searing light had swallowed up Faith and Spike entirely, transformed them from beings of flesh into beings of light. Just as she might have transformed herself in another time and place, had she just held on to his hand.

"They're gone, Buffy. Spike and Faith - their souls are bound to the rising dimensional shift. I can feel them. They're together. They're at peace. But I've got to get you out or poof! No Buffy!"

"Will! I can't do this! I can't let him go again!"

"You can, Buffy. Think of Dawn! She's waiting for you!"

_Think of Dawn, yes. Think of another world, another Spike, another chance to get this right. Tell him I love him. As soon as I see him. I need to move quicker, be smarter. Less selfish. Mastering love is a lot like selling mummy hands. Get it done before I fade. _

Buffy reached up and took Willow's green hand.

It was quieter now. The cacophony of the Hellmouth was gone and replaced by the subtler warble of pond frogs and tittering of insects. The soothing lap of a nearby fire warmed her side. Somewhere in the distance, a bird cawed.

Buffy opened her eyes and sat up. She was lying in the dirt by a crude campfire, surrounded by grasses and wild fern. A dark forest of strange tangled trees skirted her campsite, and a smatter of stars decorated her outdoor ceiling. She smelled icky and wore an unwashed furry garment around her waist. She was free-boobin' it, except for an interesting polished bone and nut necklace that hung from her neck - which wouldn't have been too out of fashion a few years back with a tiger print skirt and… A low predatory growl switched her thought-channel from fashion to _fight_!

"Hello?" Buffy called out, standing and looking for a weapon. There was a funky spear to her right. She grabbed it and tested its weight in her hand. She flipped it point first as a rustle in the jungle shadows thundered into a full-bore roar.

"Shit!" Buffy screeched as a leopard came lumbering out of the trees. Buffy heaved the spear back to throw for the slick black throat when something in the beast's eyes made her hesitate. The momentary lapse of action allowed the black cat to go whoomp! against her belly, knocking her to the ground and into a thrashing, giggling slap-fight with wet cat tongue.

"Hey! Wait! Stop that! It tickles!" The giant cat licked her face, neck and breasts and finally rolled off, exposing its belly, tail twitching expectantly in the dirt.

Buffy leaned over the magnificent creature and with a brave "Here, kitty, kitty; there's a nice kitty," began to scratch the soft tummy. The furry legs went limp and the powerful spine arched in purring pleasure. The diamond-pupiled yellow eyes drooped and the cold nose nudged her working fingers. The beast purred and the cat lips pulled into a feline smile…full of pearly fangs only a slayer could love.

"Spike?"


End file.
